BAD tourism promotions for Bermuda is the Major Irritant of the Week.

Bermuda's tourism is in a state of crisis and my tax dollars are funding travel campaigns for other islands. That's what I got from an article in Monday's Royal Gazette "Picture Row Is Great Publicity".

The Bermuda Department of Tourism used a cropped piece of stock photography of a woman on a beach in Hawaii. Apparently (though this is the first I've heard of it) the story about this misleading photograph has been all over the American news, including CNN. This stock photograph is now the laughing stock (pun intended) of America.

Here I am, up here in Boston, trying desperately to convince Americans that Bermuda is special and worth all that extra money, and my own Tourism Department is trying to pass off photographs of Hawaii as Bermuda.

Heck, why don't we just give up now. Throw in the towel and turn all the hotels into condominiums for rich Americans to live in one week out of the year. Maybe that's the Ministry of Tourism's plan, to deliberately sabotage Bermuda tourism so they can skip right to selling real estate.

If you can't tell if it's a picture of a woman on a beach in Bermuda or a beach in Hawaii, then it's not a very good picture in the first place. First of all, in the winter months every travel advertisement in Boston features a woman sitting in a deck chair on an anonymous beach.

Ironically, I was just debating this with someone the other day, as I was standing waiting for a subway train. We were looking at this very picture, woman on a beach in deck chair, but the advertisement was for a product that had nothing to do with travel.

"Why do Americans always have to sit on a chair at the beach?" I asked my friend. "Why can't they just lie on a beach towel like everybody else? What, are they afraid of, getting sand up their behinds?"

He had no answer except to point out that chairs like this did exist on Bermuda beaches in the parts that were roped off against us evil, marauding Bermudians.

Why use stock photography in the first place? Why are we using an advertising agency that does not keep stock photography of Bermuda? What's the matter, is it too expensive for the photographer to fly to Bermuda to take a shot of someone on a real beach?

And then there's the question of why the Bermuda Tourism Department isn't supporting local talent. When the Bermuda Department of Tourism received this obviously boring, overdone shot of a woman on a beach, why didn't they call up one of the many talented photographers on the island and ask them if they had a beach photograph?

It's ironic. A year or so ago there was a big to-do because the Government was not letting non-Bermudian artists sell their work on the island without a work permit. Don't local photographers deserve to experience the benefits of Bermudianisation the same as painters?

Then there's the issue of "stock". You remember how your mother used to tell you not to pick something up off the ground, because you don't know where it's been? Stock has a useful purpose, but where has this photograph been before? How effective is an advertising campaign when both the Hawaii and Bermuda travel posters on the subway have exactly the same image?

The fact of the matter is, most Americans have a very hazy view of where and what Bermuda is. A photograph of a woman on an anonymous beach will do nothing to change that. Bermuda can be a very expensive destination. Why would someone choose to go to Bermuda and not somewhere $400 cheaper if the beaches look exactly the same?

I don't know about the Bermuda Department of Tourism, but I believe that Bermuda is unique and special and beautiful. Any advertising campaign that my hard-earned tax dollars pay for should show this.

While I stand shivering in the subway, I should be able to pick Bermuda out of the line-up immediately. It should look different from all the other island travel posters that compete for my attention. It should stand as a reminder to those visitors who have already been to Bermuda.

"Oh, yeah, that's such and such a place in Bermuda. We had such a good time. Let's go again." Whatever happens a brochure about Bermuda should not remind them of Hawaii.