few days of the new advertising campaign.

In the space of one week of the new, short-term promotion on the East Coast, calls to the 1-800 Bermuda hotline have doubled and in comparison to some previous weeks, tripled.

Tourism Minister David Allen hailed the success of the advertisements as both Scots and Italians complained at two of the newspaper and radio commercials being put out.

"The response has been excellent. It is a spectacular response, we are very pleased -- that is the reaction we most look at,'' he said.

He defended the ads, which he said were toned down from their originals, and are running in Atlanta, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

US ads garner good response "Of course we don't want to totally lose the impact,'' Mr. Allen said. "They were carefully thought out. And they were run past focus groups, potential visitors, who gave the ads a favourable rating of 98 percent.'' The Minister said the adverts were tongue in cheek and satirical, but were intended to be controversial to get attention -- so they were remembered.

"There is a feeling that Bermuda needed to reposition itself,'' Mr. Allen said. "In the past it had been accused of falling through the cracks. We wanted to break through the stuffiness of Bermuda.'' The commercials will run in the short term in a bid to boost bookings this year, before a longer term campaign kicks in.

"My impressions of Italians is that they have a sense of humour,'' added Mr.

Allen.

Hotel occupancy numbers continue to climb past last year's figures, the Bermuda Hotel Association reported yesterday.

BHA president Muriel Richardson released the overall occupancy totals for March and projections for the first three months of Bermuda's high season.

Hotel and cottage colonies together gained 3.2 points over last year to reach a 52.3 percent occupancy in March.

That total is also 3.4 points ahead of 1997 results.

And bookings as of April 1 for April to June show strong advances over the last two years.

April, at 72.8 percent, is already two tenths ahead of the final occupancy rate for 1998.

And initial bookings for May and June -- 69.5 and 62.4 percent, respectively -- have both outpaced the last two years.

Last year's final occupancies for the two months were 75 and 82 percent, respectively.

Mrs. Richardson declined to comment on the figures yesterday.