Tourism's decline.

"Our illustrious Board of Tourism is doing another snowball job,'' warned Daina Ltd. president John Casling. "To say the decline is stalled is a pathetic statement.'' Mr. Casling's attack came after reading Tourism Director Gary Phillips' and assistant marketing director Pat Phillip-Bassett's comments in yesterday's Royal Gazette .

The pair said the community should stop criticising the `Let Yourself Go' advertising campaign and be proud of halting Tourism's decline while other countries had suffered.

Byt Mr. Casling, the founder of tourism pressure group the Coalition for Change, said this "absolutely ludicrous statement'' had only upset business people.

Nothing about "what wonderful plans to rejuvenate Tourism were in the works'' was discussed, continued Mr. Casling.

And he said this was because "they don't have anything''.

"No-one up there knows what they are doing,'' he said. "The most distressing thing is that there is nothing on the horizon to indicate that we should expect changes in the numbers and this spells disaster for everyone.'' He said new hotels were needed and properties had to be prevented from closing or becoming condominiums as every hotel room was essential now.

While air arrivals were up 0.8 percent, he said, room nights were down about 60,000 and these visitors had to be replaced.

"Funeral parlours have more visitors than Bermudian hotels today,'' Mr.

Casling said.

The problem is that the Island had nothing new to offer today's traveller, he said.

Elsewhere Government had to introduce new products and consider gambling and a weekend cruise ship -- "anything meaningful'', he said.

"Anyone who understands the basics of marketing knows you can't go out with the same old stale product,'' he said. "We are a boring destination and we're not offering travellers what they want -- the figures show this.'' Mr. Casling also criticised Government for spending half its advertising budget in the northeast United States and getting poor results.

Arrival figures from these areas were still down on previous years, especially 1985, he said.

And he laughed off statistics which showed Bermuda had done well in comparison to its Caribbean competitors.

These showed destinations such as St. Maarten and the US Virgin Islands had been hit by huge drops in air arrival figures while others such as the Cayman Islands and Jamaica had only done marginally better -- percentage wise -- than Bermuda.

Using these figures was "an insult to our intelligence'', he said.

Tourism arrivals Mr. Casling said figures were down in some areas because of the massive amount of damage they had received from hurricanes over the past year.

Meanwhile seemingly small percentage increases for some competitors actually reflected "many tens of thousands'' of visitors -- "very respectable increases'', he added.

For Bermuda to go out and only increase on its worst ever Tourism year by such a small percentage (0.8) was "pathetic''.

If a decline like this was seen in the private sector after so much money had been spent on advertising then "heads would roll'', he said.

Mr. Casling also warned the community not to be fooled by Tourism claims that Let Yourself Go had helped the cruise ship industry.

"They don't need our assistance to fill their vessels,'' he said. "They are 100 percent booked -- chock-a-block -- every year.'' He added that he felt Government was at fault for not even entertaining the idea of having other vessels visit the Island yet had allowed the Dreamward -- a regular visitor -- to cut three trips to the Island.