The drop in visitor arrivals in June -- traditionally one of Bermuda's strongest tourism months -- points up deep seated problems in the industry.

And Shadow Tourism Minister David Allen said last night that the decline could mean the end of many of Bermuda's smaller visitor accommodations.

"Certainly as Shadow Minister of Tourism I have to be concerned, like every Bermudian, about the shocking results for arrivals for the year-to-date,'' he told The Royal Gazette .

"The situation has deteriorated in our peak performance months of May and June. As we know, May was sobering and June has an approximately 12 percent decline (in air arrivals).

"In a peak month, this is extraordinary and this points to deep seated problems in Tourism.'' Government released its latest Tourism statistics on Wednesday. They showed overall visitor arrivals for the year-to-date were down by more than two percent while air arrival figures for the same period were down by 5.5 percent.

Further figures showed that air arrivals for the month, in comparison to June, 1996, were down by more than 12 percent.

Mr. Allen pointed the blame squarely at the Let Yourself Go "sex and sin'' advertising.

"The marketing campaign has been an abysmal failure.'' The poor results were coming in Bermuda's traditionally strong markets in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states which was very sobering, he noted.

Allen: Fall in arrivals an indictment of ads And to have these declines after spending $30 million on Let Yourself Go, he said, "has to be an indictment of the ad campaign''.

"There has to be a major concern when we spend $30 million on marketing over two years and what happens is that we get these pitiful results.

"There needs to be a major re-engineering of the Let Yourself Go campaign which we have already expressed concern about not working.'' When the ads were first released, noted Mr. Allen, the Progressive Labour Party said they were too generic and did not stress Bermuda's distinctiveness.

"That has been proven now,'' he said.

The declines also highlighted the UBP's failure to come to grips with Bermuda being perceived as an overpriced destination, he added.

Increased taxes, particularly the occupancy tax, had affected individual travellers and also explained the softness in group bookings.

Government is constantly increasing taxes "and now the chickens are coming home to roost'', said Mr. Allen.

"It is extraordinary for Mr. Dodwell to be wringing his hands and saying that we need to deal with service and price when it is his own Government that has been helping to put up those prices.

"We have to look at all areas to get the bottom line down for our visitors and the leadership needs to come from Government.'' Turning to smaller visitor accommodations, Mr. Allen said: "These figures underline the urgency of our situation.'' Tourism statistics for June showed there was an almost four percent drop in the number of visitors staying in large hotels while occupancies for housekeeping cottages, guest houses and facilities with 12 beds or less were down by 11.2, 23.4 and 23.3 percent respectively.

Mr. Allen said: "This is very indicative of what is happening right now.

"Large resorts are normally fully booked over May and June but this year they have not been. There were situations in May when the occupancies at some South Shore hotels barely crept into the 70s when in the past they have been at or over 100 percent.

"That gives an idea of how serious the problem is.'' He said when large hotels were overbooked the smaller facilities used to deal with the overflow of guests.

"But this year there clearly has not been any overflow because the large hotels have empty rooms.

"This is a serious concern. Small properties have had difficulties over the years and we have always been concerned that they were not being promoted as well as they could have.

"There are a couple of small properties which have gone out of business and my concern is that more may do the same after the results of this summer.'' While large hotels played an important part in the tourism industry, the small properties also had a key role, he stressed.

They were part of the Bermuda experience and the Island would lose a crucial part of its distinctive identity if they closed.