There have been hopeful signs of late that Bermuda’s long identity crisis as a tourism destination may finally be approaching some kind of successful resolution.

After 30 years of increasingly desperate Tourism Ministry attempts to market Bermuda as anything other than what it is, the newly constituted Tourism Authority has taken a welcome back-to-basics approach with its salesmanship.

Here’s small but not insignificant by-way-of-example illustration: A short promotional video was uploaded to social media this week by the Tourism Authority. Entitled What I Love About Bermuda, it distils into two eye-catching minutes the chief appeals the Island has always held for world-weary vacationers: namely, its people, its people and its people.

The film, seen and shared by thousands of viewers around the globe since it was posted, summarises the inexhaustibly welcoming nature of Bermudians in a rapid-fire series of vignettes of local faces and places.

It’s true Bermuda’s beaches are among the genuine wonders of the natural world. And other natural and man-made amenities, along with a richly diverse cultural heritage and temperate climate, have certainly all contributed to the allure of Bermuda. They help to make the Island a destination where, as pioneering visitor Mark Twain observed more than a century ago, a “jaded man can loaf … (and feel) the deep peace and quiet of the country sink into one’s body and bones.”

But the shrewd and observant Twain, with his journalist’s eye for the telling detail and his unrivalled understanding of human nature, was also among the first to recognise it was “our friends the Bermudians” who were the real wellspring from which all of the Island’s other enticements flowed.

The charm and friendliness of Bermudians were among our chief assets when the Island developed an internationally celebrated resort tourism industry following the First World War. We proved ourselves to be among the most gracious natural hosts in the world as we built an industry which could not have been better suited to either our temperament or our unhurried way of life.

Affluent visitors came back again and again. This was due, in no small part, to the fact Bermudians treated them as guests in their island home, not customers. One historian of the industry has noted: “For many years all our regular visitors were known by name in the hotels and restaurants — and most of them even in the shops. The taxi drivers and carriage drivers knew them. So did many of the customs officers at the airport and on the docks. They were regarded as very, very important people. And of course to us they were indeed very, very important.”

The reality is those who came to helm the Tourism Ministry in the post-1980s era, career civil servants for the most part with almost no individual or collective private sector experience, had very little idea of how a tourism economy worked let alone the knowledge of how to manage one.

They never considered the need to make our visitors feel cherished and appreciated when they came to Bermuda because they had never been aware of the need to do so. And they certainly never recognised the value of individual Bermudians in the overall Bermuda tourism experience.

Instead of concentrating on people, both in terms of our visitors and the locals who made their stays here so memorable, they focused on advertising and promotional campaigns which grew increasingly detached from reality.

Instead of attempting to protect and enhance the quality of a Bermuda holiday, they began counting heads: cruise ship arrival figures were used to try and camouflage an ominous, ongoing decline in air arrivals — the very visitors who stayed longer, spent more and left the Island wanting to return.

The Tourism Authority’s recognition that “our friends the Bermudians” are in fact an integral part of the product they are attempting to sell in an increasingly crowded global marketplace full of almost indistinguishable destinations will not in and of itself revive an industry which very nearly died due to neglect. But it is at least a thought in the right direction.