portfolio since coming into office.

In a series of stories in Tuesday's newspaper, he has argued that his achievements in the time he has had have been many.

He has, in short time, done quite a lot. The foremost achievement is the agency review which resulted in DDB Needham being replaced by J. Walter Thompson as the Island's advertising agency.

This review was accomplished within a matter of weeks and should see a new campaign for the Island in place in April or May. Until the campaign itself is made public, it is impossible to determine whether the right choice was made and until feedback is gained from the travelling public, it will be impossible to determine if it has been a success.

Mr. Allen has also been apparently busy negotiating with hotel chains interested in providing badly needed new properties for the Island, with cruise lines about a weekend cruise ship and with airlines about adding new routes and flights.

All of these initiatives are to be welcomed, although it should be noted that all except the weekend cruise ship were also being worked on by the previous Government.

In terms of results, only Destination Villages plans for a new resort at Daniel's Head is the only certain new development now that it has received planning approval from the Development Applications Board.

Again, this was a development which began under the old Government, although little happened on that front in the last few months as the company, like most other potential developers, stopped talks in the run-up to the Election.

Mr. Allen has stated that he wants to change the image of the Island to inject a greater sense of the Bermuda's people into the traditional equation of sun, sand, sea and British heritage. This is probably the right thing to do and symbolically at least, Mr. Allen has had some success so far.

The inclusion of a local advertising agency in the advertising campaign is a good move and Mr. Allen's recent European tour with the Bermuda Travel Market also seems to have had a stronger Bermuda flavour than previous tours.

Mr. Allen's appointments to the Tourism Board and the National Tourism Action Team have also been good, bringing together a more inclusive group of people than previous Tourism Boards while seeming to inject more hands-on tourism expertise as well.

Nonetheless, there have been disappointments. Mr. Allen accused the previous Government for "nickel and diming'' the tourism industry to death, but perhaps due to lack of time, there was little for hoteliers or retailers to cheer about in the Budget. And oddly, the cabin tax for cruise ships was raised by $2 in the Budget -- a 50 percent increase for ships calling in the off-season -- precisely the kind of "nickel and dime'', or in this case, dime and dollar, approach which Mr. Allen would have decried were he still in Opposition.

Still, the tourism industry has been in decline for 20 years and one man cannot expect to reverse that in a few months.

In the end, Mr. Allen and his Government will have to solve the single biggest problem that tourism faces: we do not offer a good enough product for the prices we charge. Until that problem is fixed, tourism will continue to decline.