There were some glimmers of hope in the third quarter tourism figures released by Premier Ewart Brown yesterday.

But whether they are sustainable remains to be seen.

The most significant announcement yesterday was that Canadian air carrier WestJet will begin offering scheduled services from Toronto next year.

This is good news for visitors and residents alike, as it should force down the cost of airfares on a route where Air Canada has enjoyed a near monopoly for decades.

As a result, Bermuda should see an increase in tourism arrivals from Canada from May next year. Unlike some low cost carriers, WestJet appears to be financially sound and has been growing strongly in recent years, so this is a welcome development that bodes well for the 2010 tourism season.

Dr. Brown also announced that the drop in air arrivals had slowed down in the third quarter, and this too is welcome, although it does not mean that Bermuda is fully on the road to recovery as Elbow Beach's partial closure demonstrates.

It is true that total arrivals in the third quarter rose by 12 percent, but this was entirely due to cruise arrivals and was to be expected after the second Dockyard dock opened.

Air arrivals fell six percent year over year, and it is worth noting that air arrivals now make up a bare 35 percent of total arrivals in the third quarter.

That's worrying because cruise ship visitors spend markedly less than air visitors. While visitor spending estimates were not released, total air visitor bednights fell by 15 percent, indicating that spending will be down by more than the 5.5 percent decline in arrivals.

It is also important to note that the only segment of the market to see an increase in visitors was business visitors, while the vacationers were virtually unchanged from 2008.

While the Department of Tourism can be credited with stemming the decline in leisure travellers, the fact is that the numbers would be vastly worse were it not for business travellers, who are relatively unaffected by the Department of Tourism's marketing efforts.

Still, the fact that September air arrivals actually registered an increase, albeit just one percent, is good news.

Dr. Brown also claimed that Bermuda is holding its own compared to the Caribbean – but that's not quite true according to the statistics available from the Caribbean Tourism Organisation. What is true is that Bermuda is no longer lagging behind almost every major destination but has caught up with some of them.

Several marketing efforts also appear to have paid off. Most were conducted with airlines or hotels, which Dr. Brown said was a demonstration that partnerships work.

What can also be said is that discounts work, because almost all the programmes involved deep price cuts or incentives, which are attractive to customers in a weak economy.

Discounts also mean that airlines and hotels probably lost money on the promotions. That's all right if it means that the visitors who took advantage of the promotions came back, or spent the money they saved on Island.

The concern is that these kinds of performances may not be repeated without the same discounting, especially since the US economic recovery seems to be weak.

So there does seem to be some optimism for tourism, but if there is going to be a recovery, it is going to be a delicate one.