Premier Dr. Ewart Brown is taking a lot of stick at the moment, but no one would deny that he has been a successful Minister of Tourism, with 2006 seeing a strong improvement in arrivals and with the first quarter of this year showing double digit percentage increases over the same period last year.

With all that good news around, one wonders why a statement released yesterday, in an apparent attempt to spin the results even higher, at best omitted several salient facts about the Island’s performance compared to its Caribbean competitors and at worst was deliberately selective with the truth.

Dr. Brown said yesterday that Bermuda recorded double digit percent improvements during the first quarter of the year while most of its Caribbean competitors were experiencing downturns. And he predicted better things to come in the rest of the year as most hotels were now sold out for the so-called high season.

A table comparing Bermuda’s performance to the Bahamas, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and St. Lucia showed the Island leading the pack by a mile. But the table failed to give actual arrival figures, and only percentage increases, so meaningful comparisons were difficult. Bermuda, for example, saw arrivals soar 24.8 percent in January. That’s a very good performance, but because January is traditionally slow, it was in fact an increase of a little more than 2,000 visitors. by comparison, the Cayman Islands enjoyed a less impressive 17.7 percent increase — but actually saw arrivals rise by more than 3,000 because it had around 20,00 visitors arrive in January, 2006 compared to Bermuda’s 8,000-odd.

At least Cayman was included on the list. Absent were Antigua, Aruba, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, Grenada, Martinique and St. Vincent, all of whom reported increases, albeit not as strong as Bermuda’s.

Dr. Brown also omitted to report that arrivals in Bermuda in April actually fell by 3.9 percent to 26,787 for the month, the effect of which was to reduce Bermuda’s year to date percentage increase for air arrivals to single figures — 8.7 percent — with total arrivals of to 72,612.

That is still a good figure and the indications are that the summer months will be strong, and Dr. Brown certainly deserves credit for that.

But why then, does his Ministry feel the need to engage in a clumsy manipulation of the figures to try to make them look even better than they are?

Worse, this is not the first time that this sort of thing has happened. Around this time last year, the Departments of Tourism and Statistics suddenly started including spending by cruise ship workers in the statistics for overall tourism spending. They failed to adjust earlier figures that had not included the numbers, told no one, and were then “exposed” by the Opposition.

A good argument could have been made for including the cruise worker spending figures — but the public needed to know that they were being included. Instead, as with the recent Caribbean comparison figures, it just looked sneaky.