hire a Connecticut marketing firm to help create a five-year marketing and business strategy for Bermuda should be welcome news for all Bermudians. For some time now the Monitor study has been progressing but many people were wondering just what was happening.

Now we know. The five-year plan is to be put in place in time for next year's visitor season. The study is to include an identification of visitor needs, original marketing and a focus on what is unique about Bermuda.

There is a good deal more to the complex strategy. Basically it is a move to identify Bermuda's market and to sell Bermuda to that market.

The days are gone when a resort could simply promote itself in a general way and then sit back and wait for people to pour in. There is too much competition today for so simple a plan. Maybe our market is honeymooners, or older people looking for a quiet time, or divers, or people interested in cultural tourism. Maybe it is golfers. It may be that we have a winter market which has not been exploited. But the point is that we have to know our market and then we work toward servicing that market.

This is something we should have been doing for the past 30 years. Instead we wound up with little strategy and a declining share of tourism simply because we were content and unimaginative. We allowed tourism to decline for some 15 years and did nothing.

As we see it, marketing will not in itself solve Bermuda's tourism problems.

We can invite all the people we like to come here but if they arrive and are not made welcome, then bad word of mouth will swamp the best conceive promotion programme. Along with promotion, we also have to start solving some of the internal problems which drive visitors away.

It is ironic that the announcement in this newspaper of this strategy appeared over a photograph of Police Commissioner Colin Coxall arriving for his last official function. Commissioner Coxall was part of the solution before he and his expertise were driven away from Bermuda.

When you read constantly of break-ins and robberies at hotels and guest houses, just remember that these victims will not be back and will tell everyone at home who will listen that visitors to Bermuda find robbers in their hotel room.

The chaos on the roads must frighten visitors and make them uncomfortable and thus unwelcome. We have been promised a report on transportation and the roads for a long time now but nothing happens except that conditions grow worse.

Noise pollution which disrupts our way of life is everywhere and it is growing yet we make no effort to turn it down.

We talk about high prices and a lack of entertainment for visitors but not many are going to be happy with a $16 or $20 entrance fee to discos or night clubs.

Litter is a growing problem and will not be solved until we ban cold take-out alcohol and make take-out restaurants and liquor stores contribute to the clean-up. Yet we may well allow McDonald's to make things worse. Do we have no sense of self-preservation? Visitors come here because Bermuda has a reputation as a safe, clean and welcoming island. We earned that reputation and we have to get it back. If we do not, all the strategies anyone can think of will come to nothing.