marketing and advertising campaigns will surely come as good news to the beleaguered tourism industry.

The Bermuda Shorts advertising programme has served the Island well for the last five or six years, but because it is now so widely emulated and because it has been in place for so long, it seems to have lost some of its lustre and may have to be changed.

It is also wise to look at how tourism is marketed in general -- and this goes well beyond advertising.

Arrivals, particularly for air visitors, have been falling consistently for more than 12 months now and Mr. Dodwell is right when he says that his first duty is to look at results. There are other factors which have contributed to tourism's weakness, but it is also clear that the current marketing campaign is not working.

Bermuda has been a leader in the past in coming up with attractive and compelling marketing plans and advertising campaigns and we think this can still be done as the fundamental tourism product is sound, although it still has some glaring weaknesses.

This newspaper has identified some of those in the past and indeed, there appears to be a general consensus about where the problems are.

Despite efforts by some hotels, Bermuda remains too expensive and the travelling public perceives it as even more costly than it really is.

If Bermuda were merely expensive, this would not be a problem, but there are continuing complaints that the "total visitor experience'' does not offer sufficient value for the price which is being charged.

Part of this problem is due to the aging plant of many of our leading hotel properties. Despite the millions of dollars that have been spent on upgrading the hotels, they still cannot compete with the best and newest properties in Bermuda's competitors in the Caribbean and in the US itself.

Mr. Dodwell has said the marketing review will look at how to rebuild an "emotional attachment'' to tourism within Bermuda because he says the way in which we treat visitors once they get on the Island is vital. We do seem to have lost touch with the idea that the visitor comes first. How the Tourism Ministry changes that attitude remains to be seen, and it will be its greatest challenge.

Finally, any serious change in the Island's marketing approach will take money, and this is exacerbated by news that Caribbean destinations plan to spend millions of dollars on new campaigns this winter. The Caribbean already has new campaigns in place when our Department of Tourism's review is just getting underway. To get a new campaign for Bermuda launched and for it to be of sufficient size not be lost among all the other advertising will require a long-overdue increase in the Ministry's marketing allocation in the next budget.

It is to be hoped that Finance Minister the Hon. Grant Gibbons, who is already facing heavy demands for the restructuring of the Police, education reforms and the takeover of the Base lands -- at the same time that the economy is under-performing -- will be able to find the necessary money.

If he cannot, tourism will continue its "15-year'' decline.