air arrivals in its wake.

Visitor air arrival figures for the week spanning the weekend Luis blasted past, fell by more than 20 percent further adding to the sharp downturn in airport arrivals since June.

Air arrivals for the year to date are now down 8.3 percent.

And to assess the damage done by Luis to hotel occupancy levels, the Tourism Department has asked hoteliers to submit reports.

Last week, they expressed alarm at North American news coverage which caused widespread cancellations and early departures. The situation was compounded by the Weather Channel which erroneously reported last Friday that Luis was expected to pass 100 miles from the Island.

"The threat of a hurricane was bad enough but it was made worse when it was implied it was sitting on top of us when it wasn't,'' said Director of Tourism, Mr. Gary Philips.

But he added that the Tourism Department and the Bermuda Weather Service had moved quickly to advise the US television channel to check its sources. Cruise ship passenger numbers increased by seven percent in the week September 4 to September 10 over last year although of the five cruise ships, only Horizon reached over 100 percent occupancy. But overall, cruise ship arrivals are marginally down for the year so far 0.8 percent.

Arrivals overall for the year to date are down 6.2 percent.