The Ministry of Tourism's Budget cut to its UK and European operation means things will have to be done differently from now on, the Director of Tourism for Europe noted yesterday.

Ian Parker said: "In a situation like this we have to focus on what is delivering and what is not delivering and what brings short term results and what brings long term results so we can get a short term boost and have long term sustainability.

"We will have to be rigorous in how we spend the money geographically and analyse which elements we support and which we reduce our emphasis on overall.'' The Budget allocation to the European operation, which is managed by CIB in the UK for the Ministry, has been cut by $250,000 from $3 million to $2,750,000.

Tourism Minister David Allen stressed the decision to cut the funding to the operation did not come easily.

"We had to make a few hard decisions after we were asked to cut our budget by five percent like every other Ministry.'' Compounding the situation, he noted, was that the Ministry also had promised to pump $1 million apiece into marketing its new airline services on TWA out of St. Louis and Delta's second flight out of Atlanta.

"We knew we would be $2 million up and would have to cut elsewhere.'' But the Minister stressed that the funding cut had not led to staff cuts.

The only recent change in the UK and Europe operation was the introduction of a new firm to handle the operation in Germany, he said.

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