Bermudian culture is the key to resurrecting the Island’s tourism industry, according to Bermuda Tourism Authority CEO Bill Hanbury

Addressing an audience at the Bermuda College last night, Mr Hanbury said that work is being done to improve the marketing and branding of the Island, noting that a new PR firm has recently been selected and will be announced shortly.

However, he stressed that work must be done to improve Bermuda as a tourism product, saying that a focus needs to be placed on providing visitors with the unique Bermudian cultural experience.

“The modern tourism consumer today across the globe wants true experiences,” he said. “It’s great to have wonderful golf courses and these other wonderful amenities that we have, but if you can’t give the consumer an experience where they can touch, they can feel, they can see, they can sense what this destination is all about, they are going somewhere else.”

He said Bermuda has all the right elements, including its own art, culture, cuisine and famous hospitality, but the Island can do a better job in “connecting the dots” for visitors, making sure they know where to go to get the experience they are looking for and how to get there.

“Those assets are out there, but they’re not easy to get to,” he said. “I’m convinced that it’s one of the keys to success for the Island is to connect these dots. We have to have great public transportation systems. It’s something that we just have to work on.

“I know there has been a lot of controversy, a lot of conversation around transportation and whether it’s an essential service. For me, all I’m doing is listening to the market, and the market has already spoken on that subject. You must have a predictable, a reliable and an efficient public transit system or we’re not coming.”

Mr Hanbury noted the recent decision of the US Consulate to issue a warning about Bermuda’s water quality, saying it had provided an unfortunate challenge for the BTA.

“We absolutely were not happy about that,” he said. “We think there was a better way that could have been handled by the American Consulate, but it is what it is, so we had to respond to that. It required us to be aggressive about how we manage our public relations to the world because this can be a global story.

“I will tell you there has not been a lot of dissemination of information about our water quality to consumers and the mass media. It certainly has been in trade publications and trade media, but I think we’ve done a really good job working with our overseas agencies.

“I’m not promising you that story has ended, it probably has not ended, but we do have to manage that, and it has been a challenge for us.”

Asked about the potential of building a dedicated convention centre on the Island, Mr Hanbury said that in his view such a project would not be appropriate for Bermuda at this time, saying the focus right now should be on bringing in single travellers, families and small groups.

BTA chairman David Dodwell said that while Bermuda tourism boomed in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the Island fell into a false sense of security.

“I hate to say it, but we were fat, dumb and happy,” he said. “We thought we had it. We used to look back over our shoulders at the competition. Now we are trying to catch back up.”

He said that other destinations have taken a red carpet approach to encourage foreign investment in hotels to draw developers, and the Tourism Authority is working to make the Island more attractive for such developers.

Noting the recent Request for Proposal issued for the former Club Med site in St George’s, he said: “For the first time not only did we present the opportunity, we created a marketing document and we hired someone to go out and present that to investors, and the investors came.

“We had quite a few come, and a number made applications. I can’t share much more than that but stay tuned because in a couple of weeks there will be some really, really good news.”

BTA chief operating officer Karla Lacey meanwhile stressed the importance of celebrating the hospitality industry on the Island and making sure young Bermudians are eager and ready to enter the industry.