Some weeks ago, this newspaper said that Premier Dr. Ewart Brown should drop the tourism portfolio. If any more evidence was needed, the first quarter tourism statistics give them. Arrivals 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.

This is not simply because of the statistics, as awful as they are. 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 market 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 quarter from the cruise sector, because of the opening of the second dock in Dockyard. The numbers will seem markedly higher because they were artificially low in 2008 when Government policy shut down Hamilton, reduced the number of ships to Hamilton and had only Dockyard 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, Opposition Leader Kim Swan's warnings were brushed off by Dr. Brown. And it was not until August 2008 that an emergency summit – far too late to do any good for last year's high season.

Now Dr. Brown has renewed advertising Global Hue – and this newspaper won't go into the reasons again why that contract should have been tendered – but what is of concern is that a new advertising campaign has not yet been launched and is still being tested with focus groups, according to Dr. Brown.

It's strange how an advertising agency that consistently takes all the credit for 2006 and 2007 and ignores 2008 has the right to four to five years to prove itself, according to Dr. Brown, but 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 (held some seven weeks after the quarter had ended) 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 around from one speaking engagement to another does not a strategy make.

And it is amazing to see Dr. Brown also spending time discussing the blitz of travel agents in the Northeast that also constitutes part of the alleged strategy. It was 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. It is worth noting that some of the changes in the Island's strategy have occurred since respected hotelier Billy Griffiths and veteran marketing manager Anne Shutte took over; 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.