Protection Bureau is long overdue.

But, as with many things in life, the devil is in the details and consumer advocates, in their zeal to protect unwitting consumers, should not tie up honest businesses in so much red tape that they suffocate.

The Consumer Rights Amendment Act, which passed the Senate on Wednesday, seems to go dangerously in that direction.

Legislation requiring that goods be advertised at their "full price'' for 28 days before they go on sale will almost certainly cause problems for some shopkeepers; why, as Opposition Senators pointed out, are consumers being punished by legislation which could force prices higher? This does not mean that false advertising is acceptable. A business which offered all of its goods for "90 percent off'' year round would clearly be preying on the unsuspecting and needs to be stopped.

But any businessmen, as Independent Sen. Jeanette Cannonier said in the Senate, would be wholly justified in reducing prices if nothing had moved one week after the goods were put on the shelves.

Government has said it is prepared to listen to the business community's objections on this issue. It is a shame that they did not do so before the bill was tabled. Amending this section should be one of their first orders of business when the House of Assembly resumes its session next year.

A NEW START EDT A new start It is to be hoped that the groundbreaking yesterday afternoon at the Daniel's Point eco-resort is a harbinger of better things to come for the tourism industry; things can hardly get much worse than they have been in the last 12 months.

The closure of the Castle Harbour, the lack of development at Belmont and the continued closures of smaller properties mean that Bermuda will have fewer than 7,000 beds on offer in 2000 -- even if Daniel's Head is completed -- the lowest figure in decades.

In the meantime, tourism-related sectors continue to suffer and Premier Jennifer Smith's apparent rejection of the "duty free Island'' idea suggest that little real help from Government will come in the next Budget.

Tourism Minister David Allen remains optimistic that talks with potential developers and hotel owners will bear fruit, but the reality is that there will be little improvement in the number of beds offered in the near future.

Nonetheless, projects like the eco-resort, itself the first new development in decades, and some of the partnerships being built between retailers and hotels and managers and workers are the kinds of innovations that Bermuda has to have if tourism has any chance of survival.