Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words: Today?s Peter Woolcock cartoon on this page sums up the ?deja vu all over again? quality of Tourism Minister Ewart Brown?s latest announcement on tourism.

The ?off-season? and the ?high season? will be abolished and replaced with year-round tourism, Dr. Brown said. And Tourism will look outside the Island?s traditional markets to find well-heeled visitors.

Sound familiar? It should. Virtually every new Tourism Minister since the industry?s downward spiral began has beaten the same drum, usually with the same results.

Bermuda has had ?November into March?, ?Rendezvous? and the like to try to improve tourism arrivals in the winter.

Ministers have flown around the world ? often to Italy for some reason, but who can forget late Tourism Minister David Allen?s visit to Argentina just before that country?s economy went into the toilet ? to find potential visitors from non-traditional markets.

To be sure, Dr. Brown has succeeded in the past where others have failed, notably in attracting new airlines and additional flights to the Island, so it would be dangerous to dismiss his new/old plans out of hand.

But the record is a dismal and all too familiar one. After a couple of years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on marketing, new offices and the like, virtually every Minister has come back to earth and announced he has decided to return to building the Island?s main East Coast markets and to attempting to shore up the so-called ?shoulder months?.

One of the few exceptions to the rule was Dr. Brown?s predecessor, Renee Webb, who adopted the recommendations of consultant Elliott Ettenberg almost wholesale and set about implementing them.

Ms Webb?s management style and shoot from the lip approach certainly attracted plenty of critics, but she had the basics right. The recommendations she adopted aimed to build the Island?s main markets which had easy air access to the Island, improve the local product and service levels and, most importantly, stick to a plan.

The latter point was a vast improvement over her predecessor, Mr. Allen, who worked hard but changed strategies and priorities by the minute.

Now Dr. Brown is changing the plan again. If he succeeds, he deserves all the credit in the world. But if he fails, he will have wasted the Island?s time and money.

It would be better to keep the focus on the East Coast, the UK and Canada, keep adding flights and new gateways, improve local service levels while containing still-high prices and continue to raise the Island?s presence. As for the off-season, a slow and steady approach is needed to improve arrivals. The high season now lasts from late May to early October ? at best.

So adding events and attractive pricing in early May and late October (when the weather is still decent) would be the first step in expanding the season. If that works, then improving November and March arrivals could come next, and so on.

But a blanket attempt to raise arrivals from October through the damp misery of January and through to May is a tall order.

Improving Bermuda tourism depends on a few things, most of which: Holding the Island?s still-high prices down while raising service levels, improving air access and thus lowering airfares to the Island (which Dr. Brown has done) and improving the ?plant?, from hotels to sightseeing destinations to activities, so that visitors will have a truly memorable vacation.

Reducing crime, cutting traffic congestion and cleaning up the streets wouldn?t hurt either, as today?s Visitor?s View makes clear. The visitor, a Bermudian living abroad, brought friends back and had the trip of a lifetime. She was even grateful when the thief who broke into her room but left her credit cards! But how much better it would have been if she had not been burgled at all.

The main point is that all the marketing in the world (and around the world) won?t help if the product (Bermuda) does not measure up. If Bermuda can get its product right, it won?t need marketing ? word of mouth will do it all.