A former chairman of the Tourism Board said hotel occupancy figures had slumped this summer due to media reports linking Bermuda to hurricanes.

?This season has been awful,? Delaey Robinson, who is also a proprietor of Aunt Nea?s Inn in St. George?s, said yesterday. ?Part of this wonderful information age is that if CNN puts it out there is a hurricane in the Atlantic and Bermuda is mentioned, even if it is 1000 miles away, right away sales drop off. We have not had a hurricane this year, yet some flights were cancelled.?

On September 8, seven flights were cancelled at the Bermuda International Airport, including American Airlines flights to New York, an Air Canada flight to Toronto and US Airways flights to Philadelphia, New York, Washington D.C. and Boston.

?They were responding to the media, not reality,? he said. ?The economy is being crippled by bad information in the media.?

Mr. Robinson wanted to know if The Ministry of Tourism and Transport were doing anything in response to these reports.

?Are they doing anything to counter the thing with their public relations people in New York?? he asked. ?Notwithstanding reports, we have had zero percent bad hurricane weather. We have had a glorious summer and people have been kept away.?

Mr. Robinson said occupancy rates at his guest house were hovering around 50 percent.

?It?s terrible,? he said.

The Mid-Ocean News reported yesterday that theDepartment of Tourism?s most recent Pace report, a snapshot of the near-term prospects at August 31, shows a marked downturn in August hotel occupancy, and a serious decline in the number of ?rooms on the books? through February 2006.

In August 2004, hotel occupancy was 79 per cent, but last month?s occupancy reached only 70 per cent.

Bermuda Hotel Association (BHA) president Mike Winfield told the Mid-Ocean News that ?August should be one of our strongest months. Seventy-nine per cent last year was not acceptable, and 70 per cent this year is even less acceptable.

?Bermuda?s hotels cannot continue to operate without summer season occupancy reaching 85 percent plus from May through October.?

A spokeswoman of the Bermuda Hotel Association said yesterday: ?The hotel industry has been affected by this hurricane season, even though we have not been hit by a major storm we are finding that the communication in the US media and Hurricane Katrina has affected visitors from travelling to Bermuda and the Caribbean during this season.?

She said another factor that hurt hotel occupancy this summer was that the National Hurricane Centre in the US had upgraded the number of storms this year to 19 to 21 names.

?Storms make the choice clearer when purchasing a vacation to choose a location that is not in a hurricane?s path,? she said.

And the increased number of storms has implications on Bermuda tourism.

?The frequency that the US news stations have covered a potential storm, depression and eventual storm is constant. Just last week we had storms Maria, Nate and Ophelia surrounding Bermuda ? this doesn?t help,? she said. ?Bermuda is used as a reference point maybe not verbally, but by maps showing the position of a storm, especially those that are near the US coast adding to the case mentioned above.?

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has affected Bermuda tourism, she said.

?The US is in a state of mourning after Hurricane Katrina and most are using their discretionary income to help the cause or are budgeting their income to cover increasing gas prices. Usually the first thing to go in cases like this is travel,? she said.

And to make matters worse, she said, high gas prices increased the price of airfare to the Island.

?Because of Hurricane Katrina the oil prices have increase and therefore airline prices have or will increase. Airfare to Bermuda is already high this will not help,? she said.