A major promotion offering cash to visitors has been launched in a bid to stop further losses in tourism arrivals this year.

The scheme, called Bermuda's Elegant Escapes, offers hundreds of dollars to tourists who book stays in the Island's major hotels.

A joint promotion between the Department of Tourism and the Bermuda Hotel Association, it aims to halt falling occupancies in the larger properties.

Billy Griffith, president of the Bermuda Hotel Association, said in May the larger hotels were close to 12 percent behind the same period last year - and last month they were facing similar losses.

Government first quarter tourism figures showed air arrivals down by 16.7 percent to 40.176 - following on from last year's results which were the worst in 21 years.

Mr. Griffith said the new programme was launched more than a week ago and he was optimistic that it would make a significant impact in getting occupancy figures up.

The programme sees hotel guests reimbursed as much as $300 for stays of 4 nights. And $200 is directly available to each participating visitor, while a $100 voucher toward another stay lets them realise the full advantage of the promotion.

Mr. Griffith explained that the drop in numbers while significant is mainly due to major renovations being carried out at the Fairmont Southampton and Hamilton Princess hotels.

"Right now the issue really is that the large hotels are under-achieving and that is something that we have to do something about,'' said Mr. Griffith.

"If you look at June you'll find that occupancy for the small hotels is doing quite well but you see the large hotels are still tracking behind 70- 85 percent.

"The industry figure for the month of June as at three weeks ago would have been 75 percent compared to 86. So again the overall occupancy is down,'' he said. Mr. Griffith pointed out that the overall figures "skew'' the overall hotels picture. "The cottage colonies and small hotels are doing well but it's really because the large hotels have significantly more rooms that skews the figure.''.

And Mr. Griffith said that despite the fact that the low figures can be attributed to renovation work, the situation was still concerning.

"It's a cause for concern because there is still a definite softness in the market, certainly for the large hotels,'' he said. "Most of their business is still off to a large extent. I think their group business base also had some issues, so it's a combination of factors that really presents the challenge.'' But he also presented very encouraging projections for the large hotels in July and August, which are so far tracking ahead of last year.

The latest statistics from the Bermuda Hotel Association show overall occupancy figures for May are 11.7 percent behind last year. The decline is due entirely to a fall off in the large hotels.

The figures show the large hotels in May had an occupancy level of 68 percent. Last May it was 80 percent.

Projected occupancy in the large hotels for July is 56.3 percent compared against 51.3 percent last year. And the figure for August is 39.1 percent compared to 34.1 percent last year.