Taxi drivers, restaurateurs, hotel workers and shopkeepers are all losing out because of the fall in vacationers from the United States, according to Shadow Tourism Minister Michael Dunkley.

Sen. Dunkley said stable air arrival figures — a drop of less than one percent between July and September — mask the fact that the number of tourists visiting on vacation has fallen.

Business visitors increased from 10,599 to 13,828 during the period, compensating for a fall from 68,144 to 63,284 of vacation visitors.

Visitors from the key market, the US, went down seven percent, although those from Canada, the UK and Europe all increased by more than 20 percent.

"My predecessor as Tourism Shadow Minister, United Bermuda Party Leader Mr. Kim Swan, often called on the Premier to dial back the rhetoric on the state of the industry, arguing that repeated claims of tourism success undermined the community understanding needed to do the right thing for a better tourism product," Sen. Dunkley told The Royal Gazette.

"Unfortunately the statement by the Premier showed a continuing urge to sugarcoat difficult realities.

"His statement that he was encouraged by the fact that air arrivals declined just one percent during the third quarter of 2008 is a case in point."

Sen. Dunkley said US vacationers are the very people the Department of Tourism spends millions of dollars trying to attract.

He added: "This decline led to a $20-million drop in visitor spending — that's $20 million fewer dollars trickling through to taxi drivers, restaurateurs, hotel employees and storekeepers."

Regarding the way forward, he said: "Pulling the industry out of its rut will require sound business planning, collaboration with industry partners and results-driven leadership — something that has been missing for too long.

"It is my view that the Government has been disconnected from business realities.

"The fact that it held a 'summit' of industry leaders in August and took away the recommendation — as the Premier reminded us on Monday — that tourism marketing should concentrate on 'markets with the highest probability of success' is deeply concerning.

"It is a business axiom that you take dead aim at your market and work it to achieve your business targets — to fish where the fish are, as we have been saying for a long time."

Government Senate Leader David Burch told the Upper House yesterday that though the number of visitors arriving by air from the US was down, the number from Canada, the UK, Europe and the rest of the world was up.

He said that despite the loss of budget airline Zoom and its London Gatwick route, the number of British visitors had increased. And he suggested that American owners of fractional homes on the Island were still coming, despite hard financial times. "There is some comfort there," he said.

He added that the problem with getting regular cruise ships for Hamilton and St. George was the size of the vessels. "The challenge is to find a ship that will fit in those two places."