shock. We hope that they will alert everyone in Bermuda to the fact that it will take a national effort to turn tourism around.

It seems to us that there are people, often important people in positions of great power, who are beginning to write-off the tourism industry. That would be a grave mistake for two reasons. The hotels provide good jobs for those Bermudians who are not qualified for the local business sector or for the international company sector. They need the employment and there is no other area in Bermuda where we think they can be absorbed. In fact, we would like to see a concerted effort to get tourism back to being a ten months of the year employer. Right now many people are employed in the hotels for far too short a time. We tend to move people back and forth from the hotels to the construction industry but we cannot go on building forever even if right now construction is booming.

Secondly, Bermuda's retail sector depends a great deal on visitors and is having a very difficult time. We have to remember not to dismiss the retailers as "Front Street'', which so often happens, because they too are major employers of Bermudians. Many Bermudians very much need those jobs.

It seems to us that too many people are waiting for the Monitor report as if it is going to contain some magic solutions. We doubt that very much. Monitor will probably tell Bermuda how much hard work has to be done to refine and redevelop tourism. That will not be easy and, let us say once again, it will take a concerted national effort.

We have learned finally that Bermuda cannot turn tourism back on just by a new advertising campaign, especially not by an inappropriate campaign, and concerted approaches to travel agents. That used to work but it clearly does not work today. The competition is too great from other resorts and potential visitors learned during the recession to look for the best value for their money.

Monitior seems to be suggesting that Bermuda needs fewer visitors spending more money. That coincides with what this newspaper has been saying for years.

There is room for a Rolls Royce resort and Bermuda should be that because it is too small to deal in numbers. But it has to have Rolls Royce facilities and right now some of our facilities are a good deal less than that probably because they have had some very lean years. Other resorts need to take a good look at Cambridge Beaches where a great deal of money has been spent in these difficult times to provide a top quality all-seasons spa. It is a remarkable statement of faith in the future of tourism.

We must learn that producing a top quality resort is not confined to the hotel operations. Other things in Bermuda will have to change.

Transportation is a good example because we need better and more convenient service and such things as small limousines for top quality visitors. We need to clean Bermuda because we have strayed from the days when there was a national will to keep Bermuda beautiful. We need to make greater use of the water from which Bermuda looks so beautiful. We are an island, not a city suburb. We could do a great deal worse than moving back toward the British image which North American visitors find so attractive. We have to make up our minds not to degrade Bermuda by introducing the very things which blight North America. That's not what visitors want from Bermuda.

These are areas which we can deal with ourselves without waiting for Monitor.