visiting Bermuda.

But while there was a fall of 66 from the same month last year to a total number of visitors of 16,138 -- a drop of 0.41 percent -- there was an increase in the number of tourists from the UK.

British visitors accounted for 1,610 of all arrivals -- that is an increase of 23.2 percent on 1997, according to statistics released by the Department of Tourism.

They are also staying slightly longer -- an average of 9.5 days -- compared to the slight fall in the holiday length of US visitors -- down to an average of 5.3 days.

In addition, while Bermuda is proving more attractive to the British, holidaymakers from Europe came in fewer numbers, just 247 a drop of 8.52 percent.

Whereas toward the end of last year there had been a rise in people visiting from Canada, in February this year there was a combined fall in tourists from the country of 2.6 percent down to 2,830.

Large hotels and guest houses have seen the largest decreases in bed nights sold, with drops of 9.9 percent and 19.2 percent respectively. Overall there was a total fall in bed nights of 5,519 -- down 6.9 percent on last year's February total of 79,835.

Visitors from the US totalled 11,054 -- a total so far this year of 19,360 -- with over a quarter coming from the New York area, 16 percent from Boston and 6.76 percent from the Philadelphia area.

In, addition 23 Japanese came to Bermuda in February, 15 from Australia, and 359 from the rest of the world -- all slight falls from the same time last year.