Any vacation experience is a total package. A vacationer's overall impression of a place dictates whether the vacationer recommends the place to friends and relatives and whether or not the vacationer returns another time.

Clearly Bermuda does well in many areas of a vacation experience. It recently showed up in Conde Nast Traveller as the best of the Caribbean/Atlantic islands even though two Pacific islands pushed Bermuda into third place as an island experience. It also was tops in visitor impressions of its people.

Surely that is a very good foundation for a resort which has been in business for a very long time. We have never doubted that Bermuda is the best of the islands. The proof of that is the number of others who copy Bermuda.

Where we fall down is in the physical plant which we provide for visitors. Is it tops? Clearly not. We do not think that, in general, Bermuda's hotels are maintained to the standard they ought to be. We have to judge, of course, largely on the state of the public rooms because very few Bermudians see local hotel bedrooms.

Many of the things Mr. Gavin Arton said and for which he was criticised were correct. There is a problem in Bermuda with people who believe that you should never knock things Bermudian. That narrow attitude only leads to the kind of complacency which is severely damaging. Yet anyone who comments on tourism is instantly condemned in outrageous terms by the angry Minister of Tourism.

We advertise that we are tops. Clearly, in many ways, people agree with that.

But we fall down on housing and on the provision of new experiences for today's market. Part of this comes about because we have not had a new hotel in far too long although we have had major renovations such as that at Castle Harbour. A new hotel inevitably creates its own market and causes other hotels to spruce up and compete. Bermuda needs that spark.

The great shame is that Ritz Carlton was not built on the South Shore. In the recent Conde Nast Traveller list of top US mainland resorts there were five Ritz Carltons in the top 12. But Bermuda's was not built and may never be built. The best that Bermuda could do in the tropical resorts category was the Southampton Princess at number 34, the Princess at 38 and the Elbow Beach at 40.

The truth seems to be that the problem is in Bermuda. New hotels are being built by hotel operators in other resorts, three five star hotels in Cuba alone. Good hotels are being built which physically outstrip anything Bermuda has to offer. Clearly those could be built here if the situation was right for building. But in Bermuda labour disruption is frequent, building costs are high, operating costs are above those in most other places and profitability is low or minus. Under those conditions it will be hard to attract a new hotel and present owners work at protecting their investment rather than expanding.

It will not have escaped anyone's attention that more and more visitor properties are being used for other purposes: Offices at Bermudiana, condos at Coral Island, condos at Inverurie, time sharing and condos at the Hamiltonian.

In the end, that will be self-defeating unless we can expand and improve the guest room stock.

We think that some of the occupancy problems arise from those who continue to operate Bermuda on the successes of the 1950s. We are appealing to a decreasing market and we are not providing attractions for new markets. We are in danger of being thought of as beautiful and admirable and worthy and quaint but designed for "someone else''... the exclusive quiet rich who are a disappearing breed.

There should be a future plan for overall tourism in Bermuda and for the future of our hotels so that we know what we will have to offer vacationers.

If we do not do that, we will continue to run down our facilities and to decrease our share of tourism. We have to begin by understanding that tourism today is a buyer's market and that the best of the islands is getting a bit old and faded for the buyers in the market.