Courting air arrivals is the top priority for the Bermuda Tourism Authority, with air visitor numbers down almost four percent for the year to date.

Marketing the Bermuda experience by encouraging online pictures and videos is part of the organisation’s new strategy for getting the numbers up.

“It’s the most important definer of our success — we will be judged on air arrivals more than any other statistic,” said Bill Hanbury, CEO of the authority.

The BTA’s marketing strategy is heavy on the use of online media, but still devotes about 40 percent of its expenditure to a print campaign.

The BTA has received $25.6 million in its first fiscal year — a “significant decline from previous investments in tourism”, Mr Hanbury said.

The authority, launched seven months ago, also inherited “several agreements that we have to honour and that probably have not helped us”, he said.

Currently there is a Request for Proposal out for a new advertising agency.

Third quarter figures show total visitor arrivals up three percent, and almost four percent for the year to date, with 18,591 visitors counted. Cruise arrivals are “at the maximum”.

But air visits fell five percent in the third quarter, down to 78,271 over 2013’s 82,819.

“We’re not happy about that — not satisfied at all,” Mr Hanbury said.

“We absolutely need to do better, and we’re going to do better.”

After 30 years of decline, “you just don’t change that around overnight”, he said.

Air visitors spend significantly more than cruise visitors, the CEO pointed out: for every dollar spent by the latter, air tourists spend $11.

With the BTA just seven months old, the authority can’t take “full responsibility or full credit” for the latest figures.

“2015 will be very different,” he said. “For better or for worse, we own 2015.”

Victoria Isley, the Authority’s chief sales and marketing office, said the BTA’s strategy was aimed at reaching would-be visitors with “authentic stories about Bermuda”. The BTA recently collaborated with Travel and Leisure Magazine to bring two US photographers to the Island with an influential Instagram campaign that reached hundreds of thousands of their followers, she said.

The idea of the campaign was to let the Island’s authenticity reach the “hearts and minds” of tourists, with a heavy use of pictures, aimed at each stage of the traveller’s decision making process.

The authority has joined with new media companies such as the digital culinary programming company Tastemade and Afar Media, as well as making use of Google, YouTube and social media marketing.

While social media will be used heavily, Ms Isley said traditional media are also being used, especially targeting gateway cities such as New York, where advertising promotes Bermuda as a destination only 90 minutes away.

“Bermuda is for travellers, not tourists,” she said, saying visitors to the Island were specifically seeking experiences.

“Travel is an emotional, aspirational purchase,” she added, noting that it could be 120 days from the time someone contemplated visiting to their arrival on the Island — with Bermuda’s marketing aimed at influencing their decision along each step of the way.

The BTA has 37 staff, 90 percent of whom are Bermudian. Mr Hanbury said Government had been “encouraging and helpful” but had made no moves to interfere with the independent organisation’s direction or agenda.