meeting in the Boston area and working together to ensure change in the industry is a very welcome improvement on the situation of the past.

The statement says that, "We have emerged from three days with an agreement to work together to ensure that change is realised for the benefit of all in the hotel community: staff, managers, union and companies.'' In other words, we are all in this together so let's try together to make things better.

The group included representatives from the Bermuda Industrial Union, Hotel Employers of Bermuda and individual hotel representatives. Their togetherness for three days of "workshops'' is a huge improvement on the past when it seemed to many Bermudians that these participants only talked under pressure during periods of confrontation and went their separate ways at other times despite the fact that the welfare of all the groups was dependent on each other. Too often there has been confrontation and suspicion bred of a long history of each group feeling that the other was intent on seeking advantage.

There has been a general feeling on the part of management that the union was intent on getting wages and benefits to the point where hotels could no longer be profitable and the union felt that the hotel employers were a good deal less than honest about their profits and their ability to pay workers in this high cost of living society.

More often than not, simply talking about understanding each other's problems is an advantage. To that end further meetings are planned with other members of the industry invited to take part.

Why meet behind closed doors in North America? Probably because neutral ground outside Bermuda often encourages a more open and candid approach to problems.

Sometimes just removal from the local scene encourages people to be more forthcoming.

We see this as an indication of the contribution Monitor has been making.

Sometimes it takes an outside facilitator to get people together and Monitor has arranged this US workshop to develop skills necessary to discuss the issues of competitiveness and productivity and to create the ability for the groups to hold further dialogues. Hopefully these dialogues will be to the common end of improving all aspects of Bermuda's hotels so that they can provide visitors with a good experience in terms of the cost of a vacation and of the service and facilities provided.

Bermuda has needed constructive dialogue in the hotel industry for a very long time and if Monitor can get it going successfully, then they will have made a major contribution.