The battle to reverse Bermuda's perplexing decline in visitor arrivals is up to hotels, not the Tourism Department, hoteliers said yesterday.

Hoteliers contacted by The Royal Gazette said they were not looking to any kind of Tourism advertising blitz to reverse a two-month fall in air arrivals.

"It's certainly on our shoulders to do that,'' Elbow Beach Hotel manager Mr.

Patrick Lupsha said. "I don't know that reacting with more advertising will fill any hotel beds. That would require strategy and that takes time.'' Mr. Roger Borsink of Marriott Castle Harbour Resort said Tourism could do something to help but that the "phenomenon that's happening is difficult to get a handle on''.

"We're working within our own group with aggressive marketing and sales with suppliers to get business here.'' Hoteliers said they were very concerned about the decline that has seen 1994 transformed from a year of solid recovery to a year of little gain over 1993, which saw only modest recovery from the depths of recession.

Last week, Bank of Bermuda president Mr. Charles Vaughan-Johnson described the decline in air arrivals as disappointing considering the backdrop of continuing economic recovery in the United States.

Tourism Minister the Hon. C.V. (Jim) Woolridge has said his Department is studying the situation but offered no solutions.

"You can't just go out and have an urgent plan implemented,'' he said. "You have to have a basic study first to find out the real source of it.'' Tourism and Mr. Vaughan-Johnson were in agreement that Bermuda had been hurt by competition, particularly a Caribbean airfare and hotel sale that began to hit in September and is expected to continue through to November.

Mr. Lupsha said the sale had been instigated by an airline offering discounts up to 35 percent on flights to the southern Caribbean. That coupled with low off-season hotel rates equaled a "great buy''.

Mr. David Boyd, whose Sonesta Beach Hotel is reporting occupancy rates well ahead of other large hotels, said the answer to declining arrivals is through aggressive marketing that responds to the ebbs and flows of demand.

"Without trying to sound pompous, our business, with the exception of May, has been better this year than last,'' he said.

"I attribute that to our identifying different rate sensitivities for different periods of time and addressing those sensitivities.

"Our policy for a couple of years has been to fill the hotel if need be with value-added packages. It has worked.

"Anybody who wants to attract more business only has to offer better value.

You have to have something that makes people want to come here.'' He said the increased business had value for the hotel not only financially but also for better staff morale and as a base for the future.

On the question of the Tourism Department stepping in with an advertising blitz, Mr. Boyd said: "I don't think the Tourism Department needs to throw money at it.''