There's a pattern worth naming.

In October, I listened to OBA MPs and Senators voice explicit support for the Loren (Pink Beach and Elbow Beach) Bill in both the House of Assembly and the Senate. Their Shadow Minister of Tourism stated that a vibrant tourism sector was "central to our long-term economic success“.

I have already written about my confusion with their feigned support of the Bill, only to vote it down when it actually mattered in the Senate. Now, that same Shadow Minister wants to write op-eds lamenting Bermuda's tourism struggles, while dismissing tourism investment orders as merely “a start“.

That rings hollow when his own Senate colleagues voted against the very legislation designed to restart one of Bermuda’s oldest hotels, closed since 2020.

If getting Elbow Beach operational again is only “a start“, voting against it is attempting to trip it coming out of the blocks. It rings hollow when the OBA argues that the Southampton Princess concessions were too generous, yet compares our hotel development to Turks and Caicos, who offer 20 to 30-year tax concessions while having very little direct taxation. It rings hollow when the Shadow Tourism minister laments new inward investment while he and his colleagues take every opportunity to cast aspersions on our tourism industry.

The OBA's relationship with Bermuda's tourism industry isn't one of constructive opposition. It is one of selective storytelling; sharing just enough to sound credible, while leaving out whatever complicates their argument and paints not just the PLP government, but Bermuda as a whole, in a negative light.

Their latest article is a case in point.

Yes, air arrivals have not recovered to 2019 levels. The PLP government has proffered no argument to the contrary. But arrivals are one metric, not the whole picture, especially if the desire is increased economic impact. The Shadow Minister asks whether spending is translating into real profit or just reflecting rising costs. A fair enough question when applying surface level analysis that ignores key context.

Consider what $550 million in visitor spending actually represents. Adjusted for Bermuda's own inflation figures, the 2019 spending record of $520.2 million is worth approximately $586 million in today's money, meaning we are running about six per cent below the pre-pandemic peak in real terms. That is worth acknowledging honestly. But Bermuda is generating that near-recovery with approximately 25 per cent fewer hotel beds than existed in 2019, a constraint the BTA itself has identified as the primary brake on air visitor growth.

Achieving close to 94 cents on the 2019 dollar with three quarters of the beds is not a story of failure. It is a story of an industry extracting considerably more value per visitor than it ever has, even more so when considering that the International Air Transport Association reported that for North American Airlines both traffic and capacity growth were the slowest of any region in 2025.

As for whether the industry is profitable, the market has already answered that question. Hotels do not renovate and expand when the fundamentals are weak.

The Hamilton Princess renovated an entire wing last winter. The Reefs did the same. Azura completed its new Nautilus wing and continues to build. Grotto Bay is adding villas while renovating its restaurant (thanks to a Tourism Investment Order “start”). And The Loren Group would not have acquired Elbow Beach if lenders did not consider the underlying economics sound.

Banks do not approve loans on sentiment. That pipeline of private capital is the market's verdict on the industry's health and it is a verdict the Shadow Minister conveniently omits.

There was also never a scenario in which Bermuda returned to 2019 visitor numbers without the Southampton Princess in the equation. The maths doesn’t math. The BTA estimates the Fairmont's reopening will increase room capacity by 25 per cent and could drive up to a 14 per cent increase in air visitors. That is the foundation of a recovery.

The Shadow Minister also conveniently crops the timeline on air arrivals, which bottomed out at 220,000 in 2015, the lowest figure in the BTA's published records going back to 1990. That trough happened on the OBA's watch. To be fair, the challenges facing our tourism industry did not begin in 2012. But reversing the historical trend requires all of us rowing in the same direction.

That is what makes the OBA's approach so damaging. Investor confidence is not abstract. When opposition politicians paint Bermuda's tourism industry as failing, without context or nuance, they are not holding government to account. They are undermining the very confidence that brings investment to our shores.

Developers, lenders, and hotel groups considering Bermuda read the same newspapers we do. Some arguments, however politically convenient, carry a cost Bermudians cannot afford to pay.

The PLP's focus is on building a tourism industry that works for Bermudians: enabling investment, backing local entrepreneurs and ensuring that as new hotel capacity comes online, the benefits flow to the people of this island. We welcome constructive opposition that holds us to that standard.

What we won't accept is criticism from a party whose own Senators voted against a hotel reopening Bill and then wrote op-eds about the low air arrival numbers, conducting surface level analysis to score cheap political points.

∙ Senator Mischa Fubler is Junior Minister for the Cabinet Office and Innovation; Tourism and Transport, Culture and Sport and Public Works and Environment