Political stability, pretty beaches and a warm climate are just the basic attributes that any country looking to be successful at tourism must have, a visiting expert said last night.

But if Bermuda is to climb out of the mire and back on the road to prosperity it must find ways of making tourists spend more.

Michael Fairbanks, of the Boston-based Monitor Group, shared these ideas with around 30 people who came to a public meeting at the St. James Church Hall.

Of Bermuda's political stability, beautiful beaches and enjoyable weather, Mr.

Fairbanks said: "These are the basic conditions. You must now build a complex environment on top of that.'' He added: "We don't need more tourists on the golf courses or riding around on scooters. We need less tourists who spend twice as much because they are so happy that they leave more money here.'' However, he said Bermuda's experience had been based on "reductionist thinking'' and oversimplifications which served the Island badly because it took the focus off of what was important.

"We are now in an era of total competition,'' he continued. "The good news about competition is that everyone can get wealthy if everyone competes...Bermuda needs to embrace competition.'' Although competition was a seminal issue, Mr. Fairbanks said that the Island also needed a shared vision of what competitiveness and prosperity meant.

"We have to think about how to create more value so that the visitor pays even more and we then have more to invest.

"We must find the best customers and then over serve them. It sure does work that way in Monte Carlo and Disney World but in Bermuda the system is broken.'' Part of the reason, he suggested, was the posture of defensiveness that existed between workers and their managers, a hesitancy to act and a tendency toward simple solutions.

Earlier, his colleague Joseph Babiec said a route out of the current malaise was for retailers, hoteliers and others involved in the industry, to be clear about who they wanted to serve and what kind of service they wanted to offer.

"You can't be all things to all people,'' he said. "You need to decide what you want to do and do it well.'' Part of the current difficulty in the tourism industry, he said, was that change was hard to initiate since the Island did not have a crisis on its hands.

"Bermuda needs a much clearer message than the one it is sending out,'' he explained. "We need to make the experiences as rich as they can be for our visitors and make them cohere in a way that makes sense to them.

"We need solutions that use the resources that we have together and import the best ideas from the competition.'' Moreover, he said, it must become unfashionable to heap blame on the cruise ships. The ships, he added, were just one more way that a potential hotel guest was introduced to the Island. However, once that visitor had made the decision to come here Bermudians must put value into that guest's experience.

"We need to increase the value to justify the spending and this is up to each and everyone of us.''