DAYS after the Government announced the cost of the 2008 Bermuda Music Festival – a $3 million loss at the taxpayers' expense – questions remain as to how the Department of Tourism determined that the October concerts 'generated approximately 1,500 visitors'.

Shadow Tourism Minister Michael Dunkley has called on Premier Ewart Brown, who is also Tourism and Transport Minister, to provide concrete evidence that the loss-generating event was indeed a tourist draw.

"In Tourism under the leadership of Dr. Brown, a master of spin, there is a cloud of doubt over the 1,500 figure and therefore an obligation on the part of Government to back it up," Mr. Dunkley said yesterday.

"The public should not have to conduct its own inquiries to know the truth about their Government. We should expect it."

When the Mid-Ocean News asked a Government spokesperson to explain how this figure of 1,500 visitors cited in Tourism's year-end report was calculated, the answer was unclear. The number appears to be a loose estimate based on the observations of hoteliers and bus operators.

At first, the Department of Tourism clarified the initial claim from the year-end report as follows: "One thousand five hundred visitors stayed in local hotels and attended festival concerts, not counting the overseas artists and support staff associated with each act. Many of the visiting concertgoers used buses to get to the festival which were provided from their hotels by the Department of Tourism."

When the Mid-Ocean News asked the spokesperson whether the number of 1,500 was "provided to Tourism by the hotels or the bus service", the response was not definitive.

"It would appear they used both and any other information that helps sure up the accuracy of the estimate," the spokesperson said.

Mr. Dunkley does not believe the Music Festival lived up to its purpose of "putting heads into beds" in Bermuda's struggling hotels.

"We know that the Music Festival has become more of a local party than a generator of air visitors," he said.

"The Government, in hyping its 'success' as an exercise in putting 'heads into beds', appears to have acknowledged its failure as a business proposition.

"On that point, we note they are now calling the Festival a promotional exercise where the money spent is now justified in terms of the value in dollars generated in publicity abroad and not in terms of 'heads into beds'. This is the nature of spin – manipulating words, messages and memory to obscure disappointing truths and realities."

Mr. Dunkley challenges the Tourism Minister to "prove" the Bermuda Music Festival was worth the $3 million net spend as a "business-generating event" to bring visitors to Bermuda.

"Let's keep in mind how important these questions and doubts about the performance of the Music Festival are," he said.

"We are talking about an event that absorbed more than ten per cent of Tourism's total budget for the year. All of this against a backdrop of visitor arrivals that we all know did not add up to the bold predictions of the Tourism Minister in 2008.

"So it is important that we know the truth and real facts about it. This is about whether the spending of tourism dollars have been effective and managed properly to help this vital industry succeed.

"Right now, the marketing of this event is not effective. Let's face it: Dr. Brown brought some of the world's biggest entertainers to Bermuda – Beyoncé, Alicia Keyes – but did not have the marketing plan in place to get the people here to make it succeed as a business-generating event. I challenge the Honourable Premier to prove otherwise."

The former United Bermuda Party leader sees this week's Bermuda Music Festival visitor figures as part of an overall theme of "spin" on the part of the Government.

"I think Bermudians are fed up with a lack of transparency by any government or the answer to a question being, 'that is a plantation question'," Mr. Dunkley said.

"Unfortunately, this Government uses communications to hide, obscure and spin the facts on any given matter. It also uses silence or sends out a third party to answer a difficult question. The Premier is the ring leader and master of these tactics."