The Tourism Department received both good news and bad yesterday from a recently compiled report on the state of the tourist industry last year.

The good news was that 1993 wasn't as bad as many people have proclaimed.

Despite an economic recession, tourist expenditure rose 15 percent over 1992 and created some $621 million in local income.

Those statistics, however, were tempered by some bad news -- the gnawing perception among many travellers of Bermuda as a seasonal vacation spot.

"Despite the considerable efforts of the Department of Tourism, Bermuda is still viewed as a seasonal destination, with most of the visitors arriving from April to October inclusive and the peak numbers from May to August inclusive,'' said the report's author, British economic consultant Dr. Brian Archer.

He revealed that the number of winter visitors has steadily declined over the past three decades, when slightly more tourists were staying on the Island between October and March.

This slide comes in spite of a two-year-old campaign by the Tourism Department to attract more tourists during the off-season. In 1992, some hotels began a "temperature guarantee'' scheme in which they offer discounted rates if temperatures during the winter months fail to reach 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

"I am not discouraged,'' Tourism Minister the Hon. C.V. (Jim) Woolridge said of the finding yesterday. "We'll continue to work on that and on the sports events that will draw people down here in the winter. That myth will be dispelled. It doesn't come overnight.'' Part of Mr. Woolridge's strategy for making Bermuda a year-round destination is the drumming up of more convention business.

The Minister said yesterday he would be attending next week's meeting of the Life Insurance Managers' Research Association in Atlanta as part of that scheme.

"We want to make sure Bermuda gets its fair share of that market,'' Mr.

Woolridge said. "To do that, you've got to go fishing where the fish are.'' Among the report findings that the Minister could take heart over was the surprising emergence of recession-wracked 1993 as one of the strongest periods for tourism spending in the last six years.

In addition to visitor expenditure of $509 million -- a rise of 15 percent over 1992 -- the tourism industry employed more Bermudians than any other sector of the economy: 10,088 or 30 percent of all jobs on the Island.

"Although important, international business doesn't provide the jobs that tourism does,'' Mr. Woolridge said. "I wish the people who are purse-snatching and breaking into hotels would come to understand what they're actually doing, how disadvantaged people would be if tourism is hurt.'' According to the report, the $509 million that visitors spent last year created $164 million in public service revenue and $621 million in wages, salaries, profits, rents and interest.

Of that expenditure, $468 million was spent by air visitors and $41 million by cruise ship passengers. Air arrivals spent most on accommodation, while those who came by cruise ship wracked up more shopping expenses.

The report said the Tourism Department's 1994 forecast of a further four to five percent increase was "realistic, although world events outside the control of Bermuda can drastically affect the outcome''.

Finance Minister the Hon. David Saul said yesterday he was "cautiously optimistic''.