GOVERNMENT'S pledge to have added 500 new hotel rooms to Bermuda's stock of guest accommodations by 2004 cannot be fulfilled - and the island will, in fact, have lost close to half of its remaining resorts and cottage colonies by the end of this year, a tourism activist charged last night.

The late Tourism Minister David Allen claimed in February, 2002 that his controversial Hotel Concessions Act - which provided for luxury condominium development on property previously earmarked entirely for tourism activity - would spur reinvestment in the hotel operations on those sites and bring 500 new beds online by 2004.

But Tony Brannon said Bermuda had been losing hotel rooms at an ever-accelerating rate since then and the island had already experienced a net loss in the total number of rooms that could be made up by next year.

"The reality is that Bermuda has lost more than half of its hotel beds in the last couple of years with none of the promised new ones at place like Tucker's Point and Belmont coming online at all; not one," said Tony Brannon, who owns Bermuda.com, a web site promoting local tourism, and is the entertainment director for Hawkins Island cruises and parties.

"The number of hotels and rooms that we have lost is staggering when you stop to think about it."

He said a number of organisations, including the Tucker's Point Club and Palmetto Gardens in Flatts, had not yet carried through on promises to build new hotels along with their multi-million-dollar condominium developments - as specifically stipulated in their agreements with Government.

Palmetto Gardens orginally promised to build the Palmetto Suites Hotel in Flatts with 44 rooms and a hotel complex on Ireland Island with 30 rooms.

"Bermuda will become an island that has the finest housing for insurance executives in the world, but tourism is going to die on the vine," he said.

Mr. Brannon listed a number of hotels that have been closed or turned into condominium complexes in the last three years including: Palmetto Bay Hotel, Belmont Hotel, Lantana Colony Club, Daniel's Head Village, Sky Top Cottages, Angel's Grotto Guest House, Marriott's Castle Harbour Resort, Loughlands Guest House, Barnsdale Guest Apartments, among others.

And this week it was announced that Marley Beach Cottages in Warwick was up for sale at $5.5 million.

A seven-storey executive hotel planned for the Par-la-ville, Hamilton car park site has also yet to materialise.

Mr. Brannon said a number of hotels were only allowed to build condominium complexes on their land with the specific understanding that they would continue operating scaled-back tourist facilities.

"The Belmont Hills group is planning these fabulous condos and a top-of-the-line golf course, but they were supposed to have a hotel component involved," he said.

"There is this question about whether or not their proposed purchase of Newstead will satisfy this agreement. If it does, I do not believe they will bother to build another hotel at all on the Belmont site. "

On Wednesday, the new owner of the former Belmont Hotel property, Kevin Petty, told , if he does buy the Newstead Hotel, he will build only a 50-room hotel on the site of the old Belmont Hotel but will increase the size of Newstead to 140 rooms. Originally, he had agreed to build a 152-room hotel at the Belmont site.

And Tucker's Point this week denied it was reneging on plans to rebuild a hotel on its Tucker's Town property, saying it was still "committed to the development of its hotel".

Tourism Minister Ren?e Webb has said publicly that she is going to "put her foot down" on condominium developers who haven't built the promised hotels.

But Mr. Brannon told thehe and many others in the tourism industry felt the Minister's pledge amounted to too little, too late.

"It really is like closing the barn door after every horse in the stable has escaped," he told the . "There is still no hotel component at Palmetto Gardens. Lantana is closed and there is still no deal with the people who were buying Lantana. They just keep negotiating and negotiating. Daniel's Head Village has been closed for some time.

"Skytop Cottages closed and they are in the process of transforming themselves into condos. There is a question mark about what is happening to Angel's Grotto. Loughlands Guest House and Barnsdale Guest Apartments have closed. And, of course, the old Club Med property in St. George's is a political football that has been passed around for years.

"Then there has been all this talk about what was going to happen at Morgan's Point. There was talk about people developing waterparks, and people doing new things for Bermuda but nothing has happened."

He said he understood hotel operators needed the upmarket condominium component to stay viable, but he said Bermuda was now more desperate than ever for hotel rooms.

Mr. Brannon said he and other people in the industry felt the economic impact every time a hotel closed.

"In terms of Bermuda.com it just means there are less and less places for the web site to promote," he said. "If a place closes, that means advertising dollars shrink up. Which means I have less income. It's as straightforward as that. The hotel closures also have a dramatic knock-on effect on all manner of people in the tourism industry - the taxi drivers, restaurateurs, scuba divers, and glass bottom boat operators among others. And, of course, hotel staff are out of their jobs every time a resort goes out of business.

"When you think in terms of the last few years, over 50 properties have closed. In the last five years nothing has been done to stem the tide.

"The only thing the PLP has done is to pass the Hotel Concessions Act. That is nice. However, it is not enough. The hotel bed count has gone down from being at around 12,000 to less than half of that."

He said it was "great" that Transport Minister Dr. Ewart Brown was going to increase air connections to Bermuda, but he questioned where any new tourists would stay.

"What good is it if we have fewer and fewer hotel rooms? What is going to happen at the end of the day is that we won't have enough hotel beds," he said.

Mr. Brannon said Bermuda's tourism industry had been "badly wounded" as far as the hotel business was concerned.

"It is obviously going to effect everyone," Mr. Brannon said. "If it wasn't for the fact that the cruise ship numbers have increased, there would be even more people in tourism-dependent businesses closing their doors. It would be even more difficult.

"I do think this whole situation of hotels being economically viable is an important issue. I do understand a lot of developers argue that they can use condo sales to keep the hotels going. But what is upsetting is when these guys ignore the hotel component. What has replaced the Marriott hotel so far? Nothing."

Mr. Brannon said he agreed with former Premier Sir John Swan that Bermuda could once again be the "jewel of the Atlantic" if tourism was handled correctly.

"I still have a lot of faith in Bermuda becoming one of the finest places for people to visit," Mr. Brannon said. "We have got away from ourselves with the political animal that now runs the Ministry of Tourism.

"Tourism should be privatised and taken out of the hands of either the United Bermuda Party (UBP) or the Progressive Labour Party (PLP). Let the stakeholders of Bermuda and brilliant marketing people drive that business.

"This would be instead of all this wanton spending of money, carting gombeys around the planet and the Government throwing opulent parties. The gombeys should be here in Bermuda working the island and not in Davos, Switzerland."

Mr. Brannon said he felt Government worked too slowly to address pressing issues in the tourism industry or to bring about change.

"They have committee meeting after committee meeting," he said. "In business you don't sit around strangling in red tape and being hamstrung by bureaucrats. If you have been given the green light to deal with Bermuda tourism then planning approval should be part of the deal."

Mr. Brannon, who has many years of experience in tourism and a degree in hotel management from Cornell University, said he had been repeatedly turned away by current Government.

"I feel very passionately about tourism," he said. "I could have been very valuable in assisting the Government; I certainly couldn't have been any worse than the people they have assisting them now - just look at the results. But the now deceased Tourism Minister David Allen was outright rude to me.

"The bottom line is I would like to see the Tourism Ministry privatised and all these money-hungry developers who want to be in the business of selling condos instead of looking after visitors be made to live up to their obligations."

Calls to the Tourism Minister were not answered by press time.