they really are the person they are portraying and that the things that are happening around them are real as well.

Denzel Washington or Meryl Streep stop being highly-paid stars during a movie and really become a detective or music teacher for a couple of hours.

When the show ends, they go back to reality and the audience returns to real life as well.

For a while last Thursday, Tourism Minister David Allen played the role of the leader of a successful tourism industry. Visitor satisfaction has risen, he said. Visitor expenditure has increased. Hotel occupancies have increased.

These were the key figures, he said.

Mr. Allen went on at some length about the marketing trips that were planned for this year. Trips to travel agent conventions in London and the US and meetings with travel writers have been planned. Mr. Allen was guardedly optimistic that the industry would improve.

Then the show ended and reality set in. Air arrivals were 328,305 in 2000, the worst figure in about 30 years.

Per capita spending by cruise ship visitors fell. Spending by air visitors rose from $1,342 to $1,369, an increase of two percent. Inflation last year was about 2.7 percent, so in real terms, visitor spending dropped.

Fewer "cruise and air'' visitors -- people who come by cruise ship and leave by air or vice versa -- came to the Island in 2000 than in 1999, in spite of Mr. Allen's much trumpeted cruise and stay programme. A cruise ship dedicated to Dockyard is gone too, and is unlikely to be replaced this year.

Mr. Allen did return to reality a couple of times. In spite of his "optimism'', he admitted there were no quick fixes. Bermuda Hotel Association president Billy Griffith said a realistic goal would be to ensure there was no drop from last year's figures.

Mr. Allen did say, rightly, that the Hotel Concessions Act was working and that hotels were putting in much-needed improvements to their properties.

He should have started and finished there.

Bermuda tourism is in trouble. It will only improve when service improves and prices become competitive.

That begs the question of why Government raised the departure tax for air passengers; a perfect example of the death by a thousand cuts which Mr. Allen used to criticise when he was Shadow Tourism Minister.

When Mr. Allen became the Minister, he promised that his Government would revitalise tourism. Thirty months later, it is in worse shape than it was when he got there. That may not be all his fault. But it is time that he stopped pretending that tourism is getting better when it clearly is not.