SHADOW Tourism Minister, David Dodwell believes Premier Ewart Brown is “hoodwinking” the Bermudian public into believing that tourism has turned the corner and that problems experienced in the past have been resolved because tourism figures soared to an all-time record high last year. Some 336 000 cruise ship passengers called on Bermuda in 2007, compared to the 298 000 air arrivals.

Mr. Dodwell believes Bermuda has become over-reliant on cruise visitors and blames the Government for this: “Simply because they want to drive the numbers up to make total arrivals look good.”

However, if you compare the total visitor spending in today’s dollar to that of 1998 (when tourism expenditure in Bermuda was at its height), it was $30 million behind.

The reason Mr. Dodwell says is because cruise visitors spend on average only $1 for every $7 that an air arrival visitor spends.

While he welcomes the expansion of the West End in order to cater to the post-Panamax or “mega-ships”, he believed the Government should not be taking its focus off Hamilton.

“It may be true that Hamilton has lost some of its charm, but visitors will always want to come to the capital and while I support the waterfront development, realistically it’s years away, even if we do it in phases,” he said.

He said just because this redevelopment would take up to 20 years did not mean visitors would not want to visit Hamilton in the meantime for the City’s shopping, entertainment and dining value.

Mr. Dodwell credited the Cooper family and others who have reinvested in the retail product in order to keep Hamilton on the map, but said he was “critical” of the Government for putting “all of its eggs in one basket” in Dockyard.

“Fix it up and improve things up there, but do not desert Hamilton!” he implored. “The Government’s response will be that the post-Panamax ships can only go there, but there are smaller ships, not new ones, but smaller, or medium sized ships that do come into Hamilton and will be around in the future.”

He felt the Bermuda’s attraction has always been its multi-port philosophy: “People do not want to be at the extreme end of the island for the duration of their cruise. People love (the three port visit) because they feel they are going to three different places.”

Mr. Dodwell said there were enough of the smaller ships to keep Hamilton and St. George’s “going for some time”.

As for the development of Murray’s Anchorage, Mr. Dodwell felt that the fact that tourists would have to be tendered in from this off-shore dock would not be appealing: “Tourists want to be at the dock. They don’t enjoy tendering and being shipped all over the place. We used to do that, all of our casual callers moored in the Great Sound, but it was sold off because we put ships in docks.”

He pointed out that destinations including St. Thomas still do this and while tourists would probably do it if they had too, but when it came to events like Harbour Nights, he wondered whether tourists would go to all the effort of being tendered into St. George’s and then either being ferried or bussed to Hamilton and back again.

The same can be said for transporting cruise visitors from Dockyard to the rest of the island: “I don’t know if we can produce enough taxis, and buses and water taxis to move up to 6,000 passengers from Dockyard to the rest of the Island. What impact is moving all these people going to have on air arrivals when you have taxis needed at the airport that are sitting down at Dockyard and running people from Dockyard into Hamilton and back there? Providing more buses and taxis just to ship people back and forth, I really struggle with that idea.”

He said it was more important to think of ways of making it easier for visitors, while retaining a balance between cruise and air arrivals - something he said has not happened.

“I’m not opposed to cruise ships, I just feel we need to get the balance right. At one point 55 per cent of our visitors were cruise passengers. The highest percentage it’s ever been, but it’s way out of whack because it’s taking the emphasis away from air arrivals,” he said.

“The Minister will say that he is still promoting air arrivals, (but) all of these high numbers are coming from cruises and as a product destination we need to be doing more for our air arrivals and finding ways to improve their quality of stay.”And developing Dockyard, he felt, was not the answer as it simply shifted the focus off Hamilton and historic St. George’s.