Bermuda Tourism Authority CEO Bill Hanbury spoke recently of a series of seven tasks the BTA had set for itself in order to improve Bermuda’s tourism industry.

One of them, he said, was “Don’t boil the ocean.” What he meant was that Bermuda shouldn’t confuse its marketing effort. We should market ourselves to the upper end of the market, as we did in tourism’s heyday, years ago. We should position ourselves as a quality destination for targeted consumers. We should not waste marketing assets trying to sell ourselves to travellers who are unlikely to be attracted to our product.

I couldn’t agree with Hanbury more, and I recommend an eighth task to the BTA – emphasising and protecting Bermuda’s reputation for upholding the rule of law and integrity in the way we conduct business.

This commodity has been vital to our past successes in both tourism and international business, the twin pillars of our economy.

Could we have succeeded without these two attributes? The answer to that question must be a resounding no.

Corruption and lawlessness are the main inhibitors to development in many countries and are undermining the further development of many others.

For that reason, the development of the casino industry as another pillar of Bermuda’s tourism industry has been pursued with due caution. We began this by turning to one of the most reputable gaming jurisdictions (Singapore) for guidance.

The Opposition’s ideas for diversifying the economy, first outlined in their reply to the Budget early last year, include getting Bermuda involved in online gambling. It is questionable how much thought they have given to what this would do to Bermuda’s reputation. Online gaming is not only relatively untried, it is also comparatively un-wieldy – by all accounts a nightmare to police, inviting participation from anonymous parties from around the world.

Furthermore, online gambling has failed to shake its reputation as a business that shelters and encourages illegal activities like under-aged gaming and money-laundering. While it is legal in many countries it is not legal in the United States, our most important trading partner. It is currently illegal for gambling sites to accept deposits from US customers. It is illegal for US banks and other financial institutions to process online gambling-related transactions. Most US-based credit card companies will not process payments they recognise as connected to online gambling.

Granted, the position on the issue is changing. It may be that online gambling will become legal in the US at some time in the future. But at the moment, it is a pastime that has risk for gamblers and gaming entrepreneurs alike. Some countries have regulations to make sure online gaming sites operate legitimately. But some countries are not so strict and indeed, may be more interested in taxing the operators than in making sure they play fair with their customers.

When examined soberly, we have to ask ourselves what the impact might be of online gambling on Bermuda’s painstakingly fashioned image as a law-abiding country that values honesty and straight dealing. How will this square with our dealings with the United States?

The other PLP economic proposal is for the establishment of a legal marijuana sales business, similar to the US State of Colorado’s. If this proposed marijuana industry is to generate a significant amount of income, the Opposition must envisage attracting people to Bermuda as a marijuana-smoking destination.

It can be anticipated that this new type of visitor will be a big change from the demographics of our traditional visitors.

Assuming we could attract marijuana smokers en masse to Bermuda, what would that do to our traditional business model?

Could the two co-exist? What would be the impact on our tourism infrastructure?

What would be the impact on our image, especially among those who participate or might in the future participate in our international business sector?

And I have to ask the biggest and most important question – is there any way at all that this could be a good idea for Bermuda?

Finally, we have to ask ourselves, in the light of these proposals, how deeply the Opposition could have thought about methods of diversifying Bermuda’s economy. And why the only initiatives put forward stand to serve to undermine so much of what produced our prosperity?