Cruise passengers once criticised for not spending enough money onshore have increased their Island expenditures 50 percent, according to newly released figures from the Government?s Department of Statistics.

In the third quarter of 2006 cruisers spent $36.6 million versus $24.4 million over the same period in 2005. Air travellers also spent more ? about $20 million more quarter over quarter, an increase of about 20 percent.

All told it was a chest thumping quarter for the Ministry of Tourism and will probably turn out to be a record breaking year.

Already, in just three quarters, 2006 air and cruise passenger numbers ? at 524,135 ? have exceeded the full year total figures for 2003, 2004, and 2005.

The last time passengers numbers went above a half-million in just three quarters was 1987, according to Chief Statistician Valerie Robinson-James.

The driving force appears to be cruise ship arrivals. There were 164,467 cruise passengers in the third quarter of 2006 ? more than any quarter in history.

The uptick is a direct result of an increase in the number of ships coming to the Island. There were 82 landings in Q3, an increase of 13 over 2005.

The air arrivals sector was similarly stellar. Numbers in the third quarter came in at 96,653 ? an increase of about 16 percent or 13,000 passengers over the same period a year ago.

Travel hungry Bermuda residents seem to have benefited as well during a period which includes the busy summer travel season. More than 50,000 overseas trips were taken in the third quarter ? that is almost as many trips as there are residents.

That is a four-and-a-half percentage point increase and the biggest quarterly number ever recorded in this category.

?Residents took advantage of increased airline capacity and lower-priced airfares,? said the Government?s statistics report.

The amount of overseas spending was also up for the third quarter to $16.9 million ? almost half of which ($8 million) was spent on clothing. The hotel industry was not left out of the third quarter bonanza.

It earned almost ten percent more in hotel receipts, a rise of about $7.6 million in revenue.