remained significantly below high season results of the pre-recession years.

Tourism Department figures released yesterday show August's air visitors at 47,155, an increase of 1 percent over August, 1993.

The total, however, remained well below the monthly totals recorded in the late 1980s when there was satisfaction with arrival levels.

August, 1986, for example, saw Bermuda record its best result of the decade with 58,087 air visitors. August, 1983, on the other hand, was viewed as a poor industry result by critics when it scored 47,679 arrivals, just above last month's total.

"I have to say that I would hope that we would have been overall somewhat better than we are,'' Tourism Director Mr. Gary Phillips said. "I had hoped for a 4.3 to 4.5 percent improvement at this particular stage.'' August saw a marginal decline in the number of visitors from the United States. The fall-off was due to declines in the pivotal markets of the US northeast and the mid-Atlantic where Bermuda draws about 65 percent of its total business.

Mid-Altantic states, which include New York, saw business fall 5.3 percent to 24,412 during the month. Arrivals out of the US northeast, which this year showed the first signs of recovery from what many observers considered a regional depression, fell to 5,287, a drop of 12.2 percent.

Mr. Gary Phillips said he was concerned with developments in the key mid-Atlantic and northeastern states.

"We must ask ourselves what's happening in those markets. They're basically flat.'' Despite research showing awareness of Bermuda remaining high, Mr. Phillips speculated the Island could have lost business to Europe which has done well out of the US this year and the Caribbean which has had very low air fares.

"They could well have had an impact on our ability to maintain the (improvement) level we had hoped for,'' he said.

In other aspects of the month's performance, cruise arrivals were up 22.8 percent to 37,239 -- a record total for any month.

The result reflects the presence of the fifth regular calling ship, 100 percent-plus occupancies and three calls by the Crown Jewel and one by Queen Elizabeth 2 .

The boom in cruise arrivals pushed overall arrivals up 9.6 percent to 84,531 -- again the highest ever for a month.

Large hotels and private clubs appear to be the property categories scooping up most of the Island's business gains.

For the year to August 31, large hotels 5.5 percent ahead in guests and private clubs 4.7 percent ahead. Correspondingly, the number of bednights booked were up 4.8 percent at large properties and 3.9 percent at clubs.

Housekeeping cottages and guest houses of 12 beds or less have performed poorly.