Like a drunk getting back on the wagon, Tourism Minister David Allen is making promises again. Mr. Allen introduced Bermuda's newest agency, Arnold McGrath, on Thursday.

The agency says it will ‘re-brand' Bermuda give its advertising a new theme. And Mr. Allen has promised that this time, Bermuda will stick with the brand and message for the long term. Mr. Allen also reiterated that Bermuda's target market is American college-educated professionals in their mid-30s or older, with a household income of at least $125,000 a year. Arnold McGrath aims to bring wealthy East Coast Americans back to the Island by promoting it as an upmarket haven of sophistication and civilisation from a bygone era.

That's fine. What the Island can be is a place where people can relax and unwind in a beautiful setting, go diving, play golf and tennis, explore places like St. George's, Dockyard and the Railway Trail and shop on Front Street, all in a relaxed and unhurried way.

Arnold McGrath's ‘brand video' shows overworked Americans dealing with the stress and rudeness of city living, seeking sanctuary in Bermuda and features 1950s-era Hollywood-type images from the golden age of tourism, emphasising top quality service and sophisticated living, with the theme “timeless glamour so close to home”. That's fine too. The devil, as usual, will be in the details.

But visitors on a moped heading into town to shop are not going to have a sense of timeless glamour if they get caught in 9 a.m. traffic. Their day won't get any better if one of Front Street's favourite rummies decides to panhandle them. And relaxation will be a long way away if they are subjected to some of the spectacularly bad service about which past visitors have written to this newspaper.

Arnold McGrath can't do much about any of the above. But they need to beware of promising what Bermuda cannot deliver.

Mr. Allen deserves credit for encouraging hotels to invest millions of dollars in their ageing properties in order to bring them up to scratch. Now he has to make sure that Bermuda has its price and service right or the $9 million the agency has for rebranding will be wasted.

He also has keep his promise to stick with this campaign and this target market for the long term. That means no more trips to Argentina. The people most likely to visit Bermuda live between as far north as Maine, as far south as Georgia and as far west as Illinois. And he also has to put a check on his optimism. He was, rightly, happy with the air arrivals for January (up 4.5 percent) and February (up 10.1 percent).

But those months are notoriously bad indicators of the rest of the season.

Mr. Allen would do better to wait until midsummer to make any kind of projections at all and he would do better still to make none at all. Regardless of how this year turns out, Arnold McGrath will not be able to take any blame or credit for it. The new campaign won”t be rolled out until the autumn, so its impact will not be felt until 2003. That at least will give them time to fine tune the “branding” of the Island and to avoid stupid mistakes.

Speaking of which, one suggested McGrath advertisement to back the current ‘Compliments of Bermuda' campaign in which visitors are being offered a free flight for a companion is “the Park Avenue version of buy one, get one free”.

Or for Bostonians, “Beacon Hill of buy one get one free”. In fact, the offer is plain buy one get one free and has nothing to do with either place.

It's a great deal and the agency should not try to dress it up as anything more than it is.

Bermuda(like Mr. Allen) needs to make promises it can deliver on and it needs to ensure that the service and “relaxed elegance” it promises are there from the minute our visitor's feet hit the airport tarmac until the minute they board their planes for home.