Bermuda’s reputation has taken a massive beating with international headlines suggesting tourists are no longer being made to feel welcome.USA Today which has more than six million readers yesterday reported “Bermuda seems to have had enough with visiting cruise ship passengers clogging its public buses”.The internationally read newspaper picked up on Government’s controversial plan to limit the number of cruise ship passengers boarding buses at Dockyard to leave room for locals. The USA Today story, which was printed in its travel section, was headlined ‘Bermuda to limit cruise ship passengers on public buses.’It prompted about 40 angry website comments with tourists threatening to take vacations elsewhere and calling on cruise lines to boycott Bermuda.One person wrote: “The folks on that Island must have brain damage from all the sun and salt water” while another wrote: “Perhaps we should stop clogging your pockets with money as well and just stay away.”The Royal Gazette reported on Monday that Transport Minister Terry Lister wanted a dispatcher to Dockyard to turn away tourists from buses because residents had complained full buses weren’t stopping for them. Our website and Facebook page have been inundated with comments from locals and tourists ever since.The Cruise Critic website also publicized the story yesterday reporting they had seen the policy in action a couple of weeks ago with “an official-looking gentleman” cutting the line off midway through as tourists boarded the number seven bus “even though there were plenty of unoccupied seats.”The website goes on to state: “Even more frustrating is a lack of other transportation options, save for expensive taxis, dangerous rental scooters and ferries that don’t always run at convenient times.”Government officials yesterday are understood to have fielded further enquiries from cruise ship companies and travel agents, as well as other international media outlets.Opposition politicians are now calling on Government to take immediate action to “save our reputation” and “sort out the PR mess we are in”.United Bermuda Party leader Kim Swan said “the damage has already been done” as far as Bermuda’s overseas reputation is concerned. He said: “Government now needs to speak up and get out a more positive message telling those overseas we value them as tourists.“They need to quickly talk to cruise ship companies and agents before this escalates further. It’s a PR mess, but now we have to take control of the situation and face up to it. You can’t just stay quiet and ride out bad publicity. Bad PR can hurt us twice as fast as good PR. We can’t afford to stay quiet any longer.”Mr Swan is now calling on Government to “take the lead” and let overseas residents know that: “Bermuda is on track and it’s a great place to visit.”Mr Swan, who is acting shadow transport minister, said: “I absolutely understand why tourists have negative feelings about Bermuda.This is a very unfortunate situation. We should have the system and services in place to meet their needs but we don’t and they have had to hear it this way.“The Island is struggling in tourism already so we have to find a way to get back into these people’s good books. We have got to address the problem and find a way to supply them with some appreciation.”UBP MP Cole Simons, who is the shadow tourism minister, said Bermuda was “shooting itself in the foot” with its “ill-thought out” plans to turn away tourists from the buses.He said: “The Minister really didn’t think about the ramifications of this. A decision made locally has sent out completely the wrong message to the global market.“It’s totally unacceptable that this message has found it’s way into USA Today which has a global reach and millions of readers. This is just demonstrating that we are not serious about tourists. We should be asking how we can improve the Bermuda tourism product and how we can welcome more tourists.“All we can do now is offset the negative with some success stories. We have to work twice as hard to make sure people aren’t put off.”Bermuda Democratic Alliance MP Shawn Crockwell said he was “not surprised” by the international reaction to Mr Lister’s comments. He said: “It boggles the mind that a country that relies on tourism as its second economic pillar will even consider a policy that would inconvenience our tourists. It makes us look like amateurs in the tourism industry. I am sure our competitors to the South are having a good chuckle. We understand the current economic restraints but we cannot afford to lose any more visitors and hence reduce our revenue.”Mr Crockwell, the spokesman for transport, called on Mr Lister to “recognise the error” of his plans and provide an adequate bus service instead. He added that extra buses needed to be added to some routes during busy times.Mr Lister told this newspaper he hoped having a dispatcher “overseeing the situation” would ease the overcrowding on buses during the tourist season.But Mr Swan said it was “policy gone wrong” pointing the finger at transport bosses for “getting the bus schedules wrong.”He called for a timetable re-think with more buses for both tourists and locals and also suggested Government should make better use of ports in St. George’s and Hamilton “to avoid causing a bottleneck in Dockyard”.Mr Swan said: “Cruise ship passengers now amount to in excess of 50 percent of our visitors and we has this mega pier at Dockyard. We’ve increased the amount of people looking to use all our local services and put them all in the same place at the same time. We need to be able to meet the demand of our workers, our students and our visitors, which just isn’t happening. These people shouldn’t be in competition with one another.“The current bus scheduling is causing chaos. I don’t remember having problems to this degree in the past. Government has to recognise the seriousness of the problem.”Mr Lister, Premier Paula Cox and Tourism Minister Patrice Minors did not respond to our requests for comment yesterday.