ailing tourism sector has a spotty history of helping its clients, according to a critical book on the consultancy industry.

While reporters James O'Shea and Charles Madigan show a grudging respect for Boston-based Monitor consultancy in their book Dangerous Company, they also describe examples of the firm's advice to AT&T and Sears that didn't turn out quite right.

While the journalists, in their general analysis of the consultancy industry, detail object lessons of bad advice which led to multi-million losses for the recipients, they also point out that in many cases companies fail to implement good advice as well.

Monitor's Michael Fairbanks, who heads the firm's worldwide practice, admits mistakes were made in the Sears job but defends the record elsewhere. Mr.

Fairbanks blames some of the other consultancies for creating the current backlash as detailed in books like Dangerous Company.

"The hardest thing I do, whether I go to Russia, South Africa, South America, or Bermuda is deal with the mistakes and the incompetence of consultants who have been there before me,'' he said.

Mr. Fairbanks is the co-author of Ploughing the Sea, a book The Economist magazine slams as "superficial, jargon-filled and dull''.

The August 16 review calls their "ill-informed attack on economic analysis particularly galling'' and their advice for developing countries "simultaneously incoherent and incomprehensible''.

The review does state the book "scores quite well as a management tome for third-world corporate bosses'', but is of "little help to governments''.

In reply Mr. Fairbanks said in an interview the review was a "surprise and a disappointment''.

In Dangerous Company, the authors question Monitor's work with AT&T and Sears during the late 1980s and the early part of the '90s.

Despite spending over $500 million on consultants, including Monitor, between 1989 and 1994, AT&T "seems as confused today'' as it was when it started getting advice on how to fix the giant telecommunications company, the authors state.

Monitor "gathered up a total of $127 million from 1991 to 1994'', collecting $58 million in 1993 alone.

"Monitor is a guru-driven consulting company, with the intellectual Michael Porter being the guru at the top,'' they state. "Its sales pitch includes the note that most consulting interventions fail to achieve their goal and involve excessive promises, a reality ... that has polluted the consulting process itself. Maximising profit lines is one of Monitor's specialities. It is interested only in consulting engagements that `will engender action' '', it says.

The journalists quote sources as questioning whether AT&T properly followed the advice given to them by the consultants, which included McKinsey & Co. and Andersen Consulting, among others.

They note Monitor's "star has been rising at AT&T as McKinsey's has been falling''.

Indeed, AT&T remains Monitor's biggest client, one which Mr. Fairbanks said earns the firm "tens of millions of dollars'' a year.

"If you look at the rise in the stock market price in Lucent Technologies, which is the part of AT&T we are working in, you would see that a lot of people there believe that Monitor is a source of great advantage,'' he said.

However he said Monitor did make mistakes when it was hired by Sears in the late 1980s. The journalists say Monitor's work led to "a disastrous policy Sears embraced called `everyday low pricing', which had to be cancelled after the company spent $200 million on an advertising campaign which failed to bring back customers''.

Mr. Fairbanks said Monitor did not suggest the policy. In fact it opposed the idea, which came from Sears. Instead Monitor made other suggestions which were not followed through.

"The mistake that Monitor group made at Sears was that we gave the right advice at the right time but we were not careful enough to create the support and the ownership of that advice throughout the company,'' he said. "So when we advised them to do something, the work was not implemented the way we wanted it done. As often happens when it didn't work out the consultants got blamed.'' He said the job was a learning experience for Monitor, one which the company was able to use and apply later on, including in Bermuda.

"One of the key learnings we have had over the past decade is not to be the smartest guy around but to try to create change,'' he said. "So we are not interested just in the right answer. We're interested in how to create positive change. We are getting a high level of receptivity for our ideas in Bermuda because we are not repeating the mistakes we made at Sears.'' Monitor's $650,000 contract with Bermuda ends next month. Mr. Fairbanks is confident the firm will be rehired to continue its job.

"We are hearing very positive sounds from both the Government and private sector, the trade union and the opposition party, that everyone wants to continue this project right now,'' he said.

He said Monitor's work in Bermuda had helped create a sense that the problem with the tourism sector is not an easy one to fix.

"Most Bermudians think there is a really easy fix if we fire the Minister, or privatise the Tourism Department, or get rid of the cruise ships,'' he said.

"The root cause of the problem is people think it's a simple fix. The issues are extremely complex and we focus on the complexity of it.'' He described Bermuda as a "low trust environment with a high defensive'' attitude.

He called the local Press the "number one culprit'' in fostering this attitude.

"The local Press is particularly agressive and creates a lot of defensiveness on the island,'' he said. "The Government does have to change on how it views tourism over the long run. The private sector also has to change and the trade unions and everybody. Part of that fundamental change is the press has to change. Its style of reportage amplifies and multiplies the dissentions and the negative attributions that these groups have for each other.''