ALMOST one hundred years ago a petition was presented to the Bermuda legislature opposing the opening of the island's roads to automobiles. The petition read, in part: "We, the undersigned visitors to Bermuda, venture respectfully to express the opinion that the admission of automobiles to the Island would alter the whole character of the place in a way which would seem to us very serious indeed."The petition was drafted by the then president of Princeton University — and future President of the United States — Woodrow Wilson and among the 112 signatories was Mark Twain, the American humorist, writer and social commentator, a frequent visitor to our shores between 1867 and his death in 1910.

During an 1877 holiday in Bermuda, Twain had remarked that Bermuda was mercifully free of "the triple curse of railways, telegraphs and newspapers". Later he said in a letter that Bermuda appealed to him because there was "no rush, no hurry, no money-getting frenzy, no fretting, no complaining, no fussing and quarreling; no telegrams, no daily newspapers, no railroads, no tramways, no subways, no trolleys ... no Republican party, no Democratic party, no graft, no office-seeking, no elections, no legislatures for sale ... the spirit of the place is serenity, repose, contentment, tranquility."

His view of Bermuda as a country that was better off living in the past tense, a time-capsuled community where visitors could find a laid-back lifestyle and a genteel ambience that had all but disappeared in the rest of the world, tended to prevail among Bermudians themselves until the second part of the 20th century.

A train didn't enter Hamilton until 1931 — despite the fact quicker, more efficient modes of transportation than the bicycle and horse-drawn carriage, would clearly have benefitted Bermudians; automobiles were not seen on our roads until after the Second World War.

Now, with an increasingly heated debate taking place over Bermuda's future development, a debate whose latest flashpoint is the proposed five-star hotel planned for the Southlands Estate in Warwick, I cannot help but be reminded that the economic and social progress of this island has never been an issue Bermudians have been allowed to address in isolation — that is, deciding what is and is not in their own best long-term interests.

From the time of Mark Twain and Woodrow Wilson, foreign interests have impacted on Bermudian decision-making in important socio-economic areas, with locals sometimes making decisions that have actually benefitted influential outsiders far more than themselves.

These days, though, instead of foreigners lobbying Bermudians to keep out development — to keep the island as a socially and economically underdeveloped playground for wealthy visitors to enjoy — we are seeing coalitions of deep-pocketed overseas investors and their Bermudian partners attempting to further open the island up to major growth the type of growth that has helped to spark the ongoing construction boom you cannot help but see taking place all around you every time you set foot in Hamlton.

And the truth of the matter is that Mark Twain's Bermuda — the Bermuda that was disconnected from events in the world around it, the Bermuda that was literally a one- or two-horsepower throwback to an earlier age — is dead.

Although there might be a rump of wealthy foreigners who still share Mark Twain's view that Bermudians (or, more accurately, the wealthy outsiders who visit Bermuda) would be better off living in a less complicated past rather than in the go-go present, the fact is those individuals can no longer veto further development in Bermuda.

For the reality is the mythic Bermuda they are trying to maintain has already passed into history.

And in any event, they are also outnumbered by those foreign investors who view Bermuda as a mid-Atlantic cash-cow for the off-shore financial services industries now based here. Bermudians should in fact be assessing whether this peddle-to-the-metal mentality that now dominates when it comes to the ongoing expansion of the off-shore sector is really in their best interests.

So, when it comes to the proposed development at Southlands, I can state that as a Bermudian with one eye fixed firmly on the future of this country, I am in support of the new hotel earmarked for the property, mostly on pragmatic grounds.

For if we are to ever break our near-total dependence on the financial services sector and restore the tourism industry to its former position as a major component of the Bermudian economy, we need a new flagship hotel.

We cannot allow our economic fortunes to continue being dominated by a single industry, an industry that — in real terms — benefits the foreign owners of the major off-shore firms far more than it benefits Bermudians.

I recognise the importance of the off-shore business sector and the vital role that it plays in Bermuda's ongoing economic well-being but diversification is both necessary and long overdue.

The Dubai-based Jumeirah Group — the last word in luxury resorts — is proposing a 300-room development at its planned Southlands Resort, including 17 "incomparable" two-story suites built into beach cliffs. It will also boast five restaurants and bars, a spa and numerous pools, a nightclub and outdoor entertainment space and access to more than 1,700 feet of pristine Warwick beach.

Such a multi-million dollar development would obviously play a key role in resuscitating a Bermuda tourism product that has been moribund since the late 1980s/early 1990s when the island's economic power-brokers decided to essentially abandon the hospitality industry in favour of an almost complete focus on the off-shore sector.

Sometimes I think that as a country we don't pay nearly enough attention to what is taking place beyond our borders — events that could have potentially major ramifications for Bermuda's future. For instance, just look at Cuba and consider some of the great changes that are likely to come about in the post-Castro era.

Some things that the Cuban Revolution created I would like to see remain in place once Fidel Castro has died — the education system, for instance, and Cuba's health care programmes. However, no one should delude himself about the extent the socialist Cuban infrastructure will be transformed in the coming years.

Cuba will inevitably have to open itself up to foreign investment — and once Castro has died and the now redundant American embargo on US investment in Cuba has been lifted, expect to see investors in the tourism and hotel fields flock to the island nation with cash and plans to resuscitate a hospitality industry that was essentially cut off to American entrepeneurs in 1959.

Cheap labour costs in Cuba combined with the hundreds of miles of virgin territory — and virgin beaches — that fringe its coastlines will result in any number of luxury hotels being built there in the coming years, hotels that will act as magnets for Americans who have been prevented from travelling to the Caribbean country in large numbers for decades.

A revived Cuban tourism industry will have a huge impact on other Caribbean resort destinations — as well as Bermuda.

If Bermuda wants to not only maintain its tourism industry but restore it to something approximating its former glory, then we have to act — and act now. I have no doubts whatsoever that the Jumeirah Southlands Resort along with some of the other hotel development plans that have been floated in recent months will better allow us to compete against other regional destinations — as well as the tourism juggernaut that Cuba will almost inevitably become in the near future.

We can't go back to the past; we have to wake up to the fact that Bermuda needs to start preparing for the future.