tourism figures.

These revealed the number of holidaymakers shot up by 6.5 percent to 28,678.

And the length of time visitors stayed on the Island -- crucial to estimating their spending -- also increased.

The average staying time by air visitors at Bermuda Hotel Association properties rose from 4.6 to 4.9 nights while overall length of stay on hotels and guest houses was up from 5.6 to 5.7 nights.

Last night Finance Minister the Hon. David Saul said: "I'm very heartened by the news, although we expected November's figures to be an improvement.'' Dr. Saul said he was particularly pleased by the increase in guests' staying time.

"This means a boost in our foreign currency earnings,'' he said.

Large hotels particularly benefited from improved arrivals, with visitors and bednights both up by more than 16 percent. For the year, large hotels, which house the lions share of visitors, are down by 3.7 percent on last year in visitors and 6.3 percent in bednights.

Small hotels saw arrivals fall by 10 percent in November, although bednights dropped by 7.6 percent. For the year, they are up 5.2 percent and 3.4 percent respectively.

The total number of visitors this year, however, is still down by 1.7 percent on 1991.

Air arrivals have slipped by 2.9 percent to 358,823, although cruise visitors have gone up 2.2 percent to 130,993.

In 1990, 547,460 tourists came to the Island.

Last month the number of air arrivals went up 4.9 percent to an encouraging 27,365.

Those from the United States increased by 1.8 percent to 21,666.

Canada's air arrivals soared by 28 percent to 3,142, and those from the United Kingdom went up by 1.7 percent to 1,298.

The number of cruise ship visitors last month shot up 56.4 percent to 1,312, although this was largely because there were two cruise ship calls in November, compared to one in 1991.