Dear Sir,

As a regular visitor to Bermuda, I need no convincing that this is one of the friendliest and most beautiful holiday destinations in the world. My question is why during such a major international event as the America’s Cup races this weekend, certain Bermudians do not seem to realise we live in a very competitive world where tourists have a wide choice of places to visit?

On Thursday, my wife and I caught a ferry to Dockyard with a view to then going on to St George’s to enjoy the launch of the Endeavour programme. Imagine our frustration when, along with many others on our ferry, we had to wait for ten minutes to dock.

The St George’s ferry, meanwhile, left reasonably full but with some spaces, and we docked in its berth with no other ferry to St George’s due for more than two hours.

Everyone on our ferry found it quite unbelievable that, with a large cruise ship in port and the America’s Cup in full flow, the St George’s ferry did not wait for us, given we had arrived in plenty of time, and no overflow ferry was in place.

This cannot be the way to help St George’s to return to its former glories. We subsequently learnt there was a union meeting called by Chris Furbert of the Bermuda Industrial Union over a long-running dispute.

While having every sympathy with workers’ rights, surely Mr Furbert and other union officials realise that tourism and insurance are the very bedrock of the Bermudan economy, and any decline in them endangers both the jobs and living standards of those they seek to protect.

They need look no farther than Britain, where a Labour Party dominated by so-called union power has made the party pretty well unelectable, as inconveniencing the general public on a regular basis is old hat as far as resolving disputes are concerned.

With hopefully ever-increasing numbers arriving at Dockyard over the coming years, common sense suggests all parties, from the Government to the unions, need to get their acts together to ensure that tourists are not inconvenienced when trying to get around this beautiful Island and helping the Bermuda economy.

Yours faithfully,

STEVEN MITCHELL