Company on how the tourism industry can become more competitive. The second article will be published on Monday.

Recently, Monitor Company and CAG Limited began the second phase of the programme to help restore Bermuda's tourism competitiveness.

During Phase One, Monitor worked with the community to analyse the interrelated set of issues facing the industry: the need for deeper understanding of customer preferences, more sophisticated and better coordinated on-Island services, greater emphasis on partnering with US travel agents and tour operators who can connect Bermuda with rewarding visitors, and shifting to a new style of thinking about competitiveness and productivity which recognises that highly skilled human capital will be Bermuda's only sustainable competitive advantage in the next Century.

In addition, Monitor investigated the invisible barriers which have, until now, impeded fundamental change within the tourism community: the complexity of the issues involved, a culture of defensiveness and paternalism, and a lack of shared vision about competitiveness and the benefits of greater productivity. Bermuda's future competitiveness initiatives must lower these barriers while they address technical issues like customer segmentation, distribution channel management, service improvement and human capital development.

In more than 20 public presentations throughout Bermuda, the community strongly endorsed these messages. Now, Bermuda must make new, clear choices about which customers to target, what services to offer, and what partnerships to build within Bermuda or overseas. In Phase Two, Monitor will assist the tourism community with converting informed choices about these and other issues into timely actions. As this newspaper has reported, we have selected ten initiatives designed to begin a longer term effort to build momentum for widespread change by: (i) sharing the Phase I insights directly with the community; (ii) working with pilot teams to enrich visitors' experiences and to establish implementation models which others may adapt for their own initiatives; and (iii) building new partnerships throughout Bermuda to lower the invisible barriers to change.

Ultimately, restoring competitiveness will require the alignment of hundreds of separate choices and actions undertaken by companies and individuals throughout the industry. No one public or private sector group in any country could directly coordinate all of these issues by contract or regulation; the Soviet Union spent 70 years proving this conclusively. Rather, alignment and implementation of these choices must be guided by a compelling set of principles shared throughout the entire Bermuda community.

What might such a guiding vision look like? In our public presentations, we proposed and received support for the following Eight Imperatives which we hope Bermuda will embrace as a common mission: 1. Bermuda must define and make explicit its moral purpose: a high quality of life for the average Bermudian.

2. Bermuda accepts that the world has changed dramatically: political boundaries have disappeared, costs of communications, transportation and learning are declining rapidly. These changes remove old protective barriers against competition and require change.

3. Bermuda acknowledges that it is overdependent on the basic competitive advantages of location, the physical beauty of the Island, and its traditional brand name. While important to preserve and enjoy, these attributes are not sufficient enough to make the tourism community internationally competitive.

4. Bermuda understands that wealth in the future is created through insight, sophisticated human capital, and cultural attitudes focused on embracing competition, learning, trust, cooperation and investing in complex competitive advantages. The more that these qualities are reflected in visitors' experiences, the more competitive and the more productive Bermuda will be, and the more all Bermudians will enjoy a higher standard of living and a better quality of life.

5. Bermuda recognises that economic growth and social equity are mutually reinforcing rather than contradictory. Because competitiveness is increasingly based upon human skill rather than natural endowments, investments in people will create new wealth to reward both employer and employee.

6. Bermuda understands that competitiveness is productivity; and productivity is where and how we choose to compete. Bermuda must target rewarding visitors and satisfy their needs as efficiently and effectively as possible.

7. Bermuda acknowledges that a government must do everything it can to assist the private sector, except to impede competition. It must invest in people throughout the breadth and depth of the community, infrastructure, learning organisations and a non-defensive dialogue with companies, unions and the opposition. The public sector cannot be the "master strategist'' for tourism or any other industry, and the private sector must neither accept or request that Government act in this role. Instead, the public sector should focus on building the strongest local competitive environment it can.

8. Bermuda understands that the private sector needs to invest in more learning and leadership: customer preferences, knowledge of position relative to competition, possibilities of changing the distribution channels, and investing in the continual improvement of its people and its product mix.

Private sector employers and employees throughout Bermuda must collectively assume responsibility for rebuilding the tourism industry's competitiveness and work together to see that change benefits them both.

We have met a number of private and public sector individuals and groups who already successfully practice these principles. We hope our implementation initiatives will reinforce and expand on their good work; over time, we believe that everyone in Bermuda can make these principles "standard operating procedure'' rather than exceptional conduct. As they do, the entire Bermuda community will be well on the way to having the tourism industry that is the envy of the world and for the benefit of everyone.