Clearly the glory days when visitors would come here, pay almost any price, take what they were given and go home singing Bermuda's praises are over. The recession ended all that by making North Americans very conscious of value for money.

But Bermuda played a real part itself in ending the glory days. For far too long we charged top dollar but did not supply a top product. There is room in this world for the best, the Rolls Royce of resorts. Bermuda thought it was that resort but it left out the Rolls Royce quality, the care, the service, the attention to detail and the first class welcome.

There are still plenty of people willing to pay top dollar for top quality but that is where Bermuda falls down. There is some top quality but too little to keep our visitors happy and what we have is at a price which makes even the very rich hesitate. Visitors used to say that Bermuda was expensive but they found it "worth it'' but today more and more simply complain about the price and more and more appear to be saying that they will not be back.

This is an unhappy situation created by Bermuda's own high living and complicated by the fact that the United States itself is now reasonably priced compared to many other countries. The latter was not always the case.

Continuing declines in visitor figures in high season this year indicate that Bermuda's tourism is in more than passing trouble. Yet the public and the politicians, perhaps distracted by the Independence debate, do not seem very concerned about the goose that laid Bermuda's golden egg.

To be fair, the Minister of Tourism, the Hon. C.V. (Jim) Woolridge, says publicly that he thinks tourism should be "on the front burner of our national agenda''. He says that most importantly Bermuda needs to find a way to reduce costs in the tourism industry. Mr. Woolridge is absolutely correct.

Mr. Woolridge has said, "We need to spend our time, energy and other resources in reassessing our product. We need to focus now, in the face of enormous competition, on first class physical plants and raising the standard of these plants along with improved service.'' But in exactly the same way that we have been complacent in the past, there does not appear to be any real will to do anything to help tourism. We continue to leave the departure tax, the automatic gratuities and the hotel room taxes in place, knowing full well that they are a constant irritant to visitors.

Too often visitor facilities are expensive and not in the best shape. We do not appear to have done very much to improve the welcome at the Airport where too often we greet our "bread and butter'' with a grunt.

Our roads are chaos but we do not tailor transportation to the well-being, comfort and convenience of our visitors.

But we do know how to charge. We always know that.