Opting to keep both the Tourism and Transport portfolios when he became Premier has made sure Ewart Brown has kept ultra busy.

He scored big hits with the landing of the golf Grand Slam which was judged a big success despite the absence of Tiger Woods while the Music Festival attracted a stellar line-up as it moved to the National Stadium.

And there has been a rash of proposed hotel developments including the controversial 460-plus bed Southlands development which is now stalled as an alternative to building on green space is weighed up.

Department of Conservation officials and environmentalists opposed the plan which required building on woodland and the construction of a tunnel on South Shore Road.

Approval was pushed through via Special Development Order which bypassed normal Planning scrutiny — one of a number of hotel projects to go that route, including the 700-plus bed Atlantic hotel further along South Shore in Warwick.

For commentator Tom Vesey the pace of development is too much, too quickly and the abuse of special development orders is a source of concern.

"That is something he has to take responsibility for — so much of the way Bermuda is being governed, is being done behind closed doors."

When decisions were made outside the normal process, people suspected the worst motives, said Mr. Vesey when Planning and zoning rules were routinely shoved aside.

The rush to reinvigorate Bermuda's second pillar of the economy has not been properly explained, said Mr. Vesey.

"He's not done a very good job of showing why Bermuda needs it so much."

The focus on tourism could be some "subconscious nostalgia", said Mr. Vesey. "The building large resort hotels seems a blast from the past.

"You would think that rather than trying to build huge hotels, modern business would be better off with a convention centre and the encouragement of high-price boutique hotels which wouldn't be such an imposition on the workforce and the landscape."

And environmentalist Stuart Hayward also questioned the rationale behind the boosting of the hospitality sector.

"The promotion of tourism as a source of Bermudians having multiple jobs is a regressive step," Mr. Hayward said.

"We ought to be educating Bermudians to an elevated standard, not dumbing down the job market to suit the inferior public education being delivered to mostly black and local students."

He said SDOs have accelerated, while the rationale for using them has decreased as a nanny state mentality set in where Government said the people didn't need to know about what was being done until it was over.

Mr. Hayward said the Premier's disdain for environmental issues might stem from the years he spent in LA, which Mr. Hayward described as perhaps the most polluted, congestion and crime-ridden US territory.

The Premier didn't understand the effect on traffic of larger and faster vehicles, said Mr. Hayward.

"He doesn't seem to pay attention to rising crime — particularly against tourists," he added. "When you spend decades in a particularly poisonous culture, I don't think that trains one to respect and care for a peaceful and tranquil culture which was Bermuda's greatest selling point."