Some weeks ago, this newspaper said Premier Dr. Ewart Brown should drop the tourism portfolio.

If any more evidence was needed, the first quarter tourism statistics released last month provided it. The figures are so miserable that if anyone else held the job, the Premier would be obliged to fire them. Now he needs to do the right thing and fire himself. Air arrivals are down dramatically from every market. Almost every class of accommodation has shown a decline. The proportion of business visitors has now increased to virtually half the arrivals for the first quarter. This means that the Department of Tourism can only take full credit for, at best, half of the dribble of visitors to the Island.

Dr. Brown will get some relief in the second and third quarters from the cruise sector, because of the opening of the second dock in Dockyard. The numbers will seem markedly higher, simply because they were artificially low in 2008 when Government policy shut down Hamilton, reduced the number of ships to Hamilton and had only the single Dockyard dock functioning fully. Therefore, any true comparison should be done with 2007, not 2008. Not all the blame can be laid at Dr. Brown's door. The world is in the worst economic decline in 70 years, and the Northeast US, Bermuda's main market, has been hit harder than many other regions. The Wall Street financial services workers who could afford Bermuda's high prices have been hit harder than most; so it's no surprise that arrivals would fall off.

Where Dr. Brown can be faulted is in not preparing for this. Well over a year ago, the warnings of Opposition Leader Kim Swan and others were brushed off by Dr. Brown. It was not until August, 2008 that an emergency summit – far too late to do any good for last year's high season – took place. Nor have the various summits on tourism since come up with anything very innovative. And in February this year, he failed to secure an increase in the budget for tourism (and said it would not be necessary) at a time when the Island's competitors were ramping up their marketing and advertising. Now Dr. Brown has renewed the contract for advertising agency Global Hue, and there is not room to again go into why that contract should not have gone out to open tender. But what is of concern is that a new advertising campaign has not yet been launched and was still being tested with focus groups when Global Hue got the new contract, according to Dr. Brown.

It is also strange how an advertising agency that consistently takes all the credit for 2006 and 2007 and ignores 2008 deserves four to five years to prove itself, according to Dr. Brown, when Sales Focus was gone after just four to five months.

With regard to the new advertising campaign, May, and probably part of June have already been lost from Bermuda's incredible shrinking high season before an advertising campaign has been launched. What became starkly clear at Dr. Brown's quarterly briefing last month was that there is no strategy. Dr. Brown relied on anecdotes of speeches that he had given that had generated the odd conference and wedding. One man rushing from one speaking engagement to another does not a strategy make. And it was also interesting to see Dr. Brown trumpet the blitz of travel agents in the Northeast. It was the same Dr. Brown who spent the last three or four years dismissing travel agents as an anachronism and an irrelevance and was busy closing down Bermuda tourism offices in gateway cities. At the same time, Bermuda wasted almost $4 million on the Music Festival.

If anything demonstrates the bankruptcy of Bermuda's strategy, that does. Recently, there have been some positive moves, including this week's two-day sale. This is a good way of getting some attention for Bermuda tourism – and putting heads on beds. Assuming that hotels will take a loss on the bookings, it is not a long term strategy, but it is a start. It is worth noting that some of the positive changes in the Island's strategy have occurred since respected hotelier Billy Griffiths and veteran marketing manager Anne Shutte came into tourism; it gives one the sense that the professionals have arrived. When this newspaper said that Dr. Brown should resign, we offered another reason as well. Bermuda has bigger problems than tourism which require leadership, not least the crime wave. In many ways, a Premier is like a chief executive officer. He should have sufficient confidence in his colleagues to delegate responsibility for important jobs while he oversees the performance of the whole government.

Being Tourism Minister is a full-time job on its own, and it is asking a lot to expect the Minister of Tourism to oversee the rest of the Government as well.