Carnival Cruises last night denied a report that it was “chased out of Bermuda” by Tourism Minister David Allen when he demanded it spend $1 million on marketing for five additional trips to the Island.

A report on the Bermuda.com website stated Carnival president Bob Dickinson stormed out of a meeting with Mr. Allen within five minutes after the Minister asked for a $200,000 marketing fee for each of the five extra voyages the company wants for this season.

But last night Carnival vice president for marketing and planning Terry Thornton told The Royal Gazette that the story was inaccurate.

The company turned down between five and ten extra cruising spots for this season because it had already heavily sold some vacations to another location on a ship which would have to be diverted to Bermuda.

Changing the ship to Bermuda on the dates offered would be too disruptive, he said.

And while Mr. Allen did ask for a commitment to heavily market the trips, this was not a concern since Carnival intended to spend a lot of money promoting the cruises.

Mr. Dickinson said Carnival, which is sending two ships, the Triumph and the Legend, to the Island this year, is still extremely keen to get a full season at Dockyard for next year.

“There was some information circulating in Bermuda that Bob (Dickinson) stormed out of the meeting, but that's not accurate at all.

“We had a good meeting,” said Mr. Thornton.

“We are as committed as ever to continuing our discussions with Mr. Allen and his team to convince him that he should provide us with a full season ship for 2003.

“If we were to have an extensive number of calls in Bermuda we would spend a fair amount of money.

“I am not saying that ($200,00 per trip) amount - but it did not concern us about the magnitude of the number.

“We evaluated the dates we were offered and we could not go into it.

“If we were granted a full season ship or more calls, we would want to aggressively promote Bermuda as part of our marketing and we would integrate it everywhere so we would probably come to some very large promotional amount.”