The United Bermuda Party does not see casinos as the "silver bullet" to revive tourism, but would consider all options, business chiefs were told at a Thursday morning 'power breakfast'.

And the UBP would not rule out placing a casino on White's Island as part of its vision for a night-time entertainment attraction in the middle of Hamilton Harbour.

Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons said he was sceptical whether gambling was the "silver bullet" to revive Bermuda's tourism fortunes, when quizzed on the subject he said: "We should look at all kinds of options."

Dr. Gibbons was speaking at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess as members of the Chamber of Commerce grilled him and other UBP candidates on how they would tackle a range of issues, including tourism, housing, immigration and transport.

Members of the Progressive Labour Party had been invited to attend a separate breakfast with Chamber members, but chose to decline the invitation.

The development of White's Island is part of the UBP's plan to revitalise tourism, which would be supplemented by a redesigned Hamilton waterfront in a bid to make Front Street a "destination within a destination".

Other ideas that would include the creation of a special restaurant area on Front Street, as well as moving the freight docks from Hamilton to the North Shore.

Shadow Tourism Minister David Dodwell said he believed the question of casinos was a perfect example of how the UBP's idea of an Economic Development and Tourism Authority would depoliticise the tourism process.

"We'll manage the process in which discussion can take place so we can look at what the customer wants and what the views of Bermudians are. The tourism authority would show how you can take something like that for discussion without politicians injecting their views," he said.

Dr. Gibbons said he would like to make the proposed body bi-partisan, with the inclusion of someone who is "opposition related" in order to bring a "cross-section" of views into the government process.

"It's amazing what five years in opposition will do to any party," he said. "We are very interested in bringing the Opposition more into the overall process. We have no intention of cleaning house in the same way the PLP did in 1998."

Meanwhile, Mr. Dodwell said he believed the GPS system for taxis was a good idea but that the approach of Government needed to be non-authoritarian and cooperative in order to bring people on board.

"It's a challenge. We've met with a number of taxi drivers and its actually quite a complicated industry because there are more than 600 entrepreneurs operating their own businesses," he said.

"I happen to think that if some of the taxi drivers start to use it and they talk about it and it does work and it's settled on in a fair and transparent way then more and more people will come on board."

It was also revealed at the power breakfast that the UBP's ideas for building multi-storey housing might be concentrated in the area of North Hamilton.

Dr. Gibbons said: "We're talking about cluster housing and we've also talked about the possibility of going up and reducing height restrictions, perhaps in North Hamilton, where you can get more people closer to Hamilton, it cuts down on traffic and also it is a more efficient building project if you go up a few storeys as well."

He continued: "There is a fair bit of space over there for a condo-type ownership development and we want to get young and middle aged Bermudians onto the housing ladder so they can get to a point where they are contributing towards equity as opposed to just towards rent. The cost of housing is a huge burden for a lot of people in terms of making ends meet."