There is a pattern worth naming.

When the Progressive Labour Party suffers a defeat or setback, its parliamentarians tend to take a swing at the Opposition.

I understand they are reeling from the defeat of their municipalities legislation in the Senate, and it seems the Junior Minister of Tourism seeks to continue a tried-and-true PLP political strategy.

However, with his swipe at my Senate colleagues and myself regarding tourism, he wrote a few things in his piece that are worth correcting.

The narrative that the One Bermuda Alliance does not support the reopening of the Elbow Beach Hotel is simply untrue. It was under our administration that The Loren Hotel opened in 2017.

The investors and developers courted by the One Bermuda Alliance continue to bear fruit today. Those same developers have acquired Elbow Beach and have our full support.

The Senate vote was explained previously as a discrepancy regarding the concessions granted which were cleared up, and in the debate none of our senators expressed a lack of support for the reopening of the Elbow Beach Hotel.

The junior minister’s claims that we “attempted to trip it coming out of the blocks” is a reach when without the One Bermuda Alliance the developers might not have been here to acquire Elbow Beach in the first place.

We have always supported the efforts of the Progressive Labour Party government to rebuild tourism when they are in the best interest of Bermudians.

There was also mention of my comparison to the Turks & Caicos because they offer 20-to-30-year tax concessions while the OBA “argues” that the Fairmont Southampton’s concessions were too generous.

This is sadly a straw man argument as the reference was to show that comparable jurisdictions have found their recipe to increase their tourism arrivals to pre-pandemic levels.

It is extremely doubtful that all of the Turks & Caicos’s improvement in tourism can be reduced to the tax concessions they offer. Therefore, with no argument from us to increase concessions, this point is moot.

However, let me further qualify our opposition to the 15-year concessions given to the Fairmont Southampton developers.

We were able to secure St Regis hotel, which was a brand-new build, by offering ten-year concessions to the developers. We found it implausible that a hotel renovation should be given more concessions than a newly built hotel.

There were also other occurrences such as the Fairmont owners deciding to close its doors during the pandemic, while other hotels decided to adapt to those difficult times and remain open.

The closure, which was meant to be temporary, ended up lasting almost six years during which the Progressive Labour Party had to step in to ensure redundancy payments were made to staff, although later paid back, only for the taxpayer to pay for the lack of maintenance of the Fairmont Southampton during its closure with an increase in concessions and the number of residential units granted via an updated special development order.

To reduce the One Bermuda Alliance’s position to simply “that the concessions were too generous” is a gross mischaracterisation.

On a brighter note, there are two things the junior minister admitted in his article that show we do share the same reality — air arrivals have not returned to 2019 levels and that current visitor spending, when adjusted for inflation, is lower than our peak spending record in 2019.

About 6 per cent, according to the junior minister’s own estimation, or “94 cents on the 2019 dollar with three quarters of the beds is not a story of failure”.

The three main points of my article he replied to was that our tourism industry hasn’t returned to 2019 levels, that our increased tourism spending might not be translating into profit for the industry owing to inflation, and that we need to make some capital investments in our infrastructure to improve our tourism product.

The junior minister agreed with the first two points, ignored the third, so what point is he arguing?

It seems we are indeed “rowing in the same direction” on wanting our tourism industry to recover. My article did not suggest tourism was “failing” but only to put forward a realistic outlook on our tourism industry and suggestions on where we can improve.

I put forward some solutions that were conveniently ignored by the junior minister, making his commentary rather disingenuous.

Concessions must be consistent, transparent and tied to outcomes. We need to see the growth of Bermudians in hospitality management, not just claims that this is in the plan.

Claiming that the Opposition is potentially damaging investor confidence by doing our job comes across as an excuse for struggling to attract additional investors to our shores. I would suggest the junior minister welcome more dialogue on potential solutions rather than attempting to shift blame for the Progressive Labour Party government’s shortcomings on to the Opposition.

• Dwayne Robinson is the Shadow Tourism Minister and the One Bermuda Alliance MP for Southampton East Central