All but one of Bermuda?s North American tourism offices were closed because they were not helping to sell the Island, Tourism Minister Ewart Brown told a public meeting.

The Deputy Premier said on Monday night that the Government could see no reason to keep the satellite offices and so only the New York outfit now remained open.

But he warned that workers there faced the axe unless they met strict Government targets on getting visitors to Bermuda.

?We found that we had offices in Toronto, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Boston,? he said. ?Then we said ?why do we need offices if they are not on the street and people are not walking in off the street?.

?We closed them. We saved a lot of money not paying rent. We really didn?t need to keep these offices open.?

He said tourism representatives were instead offered the chance to work from home, using the latest technology.

The office closures were announced by Dr. Brown last month as part of a drive to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of the tourism department. He told Monday?s meeting at Warwick Workman?s Club: ?We have one office now and it?s in New York and we are moving out of that one. We are moving to an address on Wall Street.

?We get more space for less money. We?ll be in there in April. I think that that?s going to work to our advantage.?

He told party members that when he visited the New York office he found that some sales reps were not ?selling? Bermuda and so Government had downsized the operation.

He said: ?I didn?t find a real energetic situation. I walked in the New York office; it was frightening. I never even heard the phone ring.

?I said ?how come you guys are not selling?? They said ?Minister, that?s not our job?.?

He said staff had now been given tough targets and told that they would lose their jobs if they were not met.

?If you go there today you see a different situation,? he said.

?So you might hear stories. The real story is I?m trying to create an effective machine so that when the Bahamas goes after the same people we go after, they won?t stand a chance.

?Where they can beat us is is on presentation and nightlife but we are working on that.?