The United Bermuda Party has responded to the latest tourism arrival statistics with a call to remove politics out of tourism.Charlie Swan, the UBP spokesman for tourism reiterated his party’s call for a tourism authority. Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert criticised both opposition parties for repeatedly calling for a tourism authority but failing to tell the public what it would look like.And, he said, the revamped Tourism Board was “very similar” to tourism authorities in other jurisdictions.Mr Swan argued, in an e-mail to The Royal Gazette, that the Island could not depend on the personality and good intentions of the Tourism Minister to turn things around.“If the recent decline in arrivals proves anything, it is that Bermuda needs more than a popular Tourism Minister and a campaign that meets the approval of local voters,” Mr Swan said. “Bermuda desperately needs politics taken out of our tourism industry and placed more firmly in the hands of business professionals.”Mr Furbert announced on Friday that visitor arrivals fell by one percent for the second quarter of 2012, after a large dip in convention business tourists.He said that about 240,000 visitors came to Bermuda in April, May and June this year, down from 243,000 in the corresponding period of 2011.“We remain resolute in our call for a tourism authority to lead Bermuda to rejuvenate our diminished economic engine of tourism,” Mr Swan said.“The latest tourism results are a cruel reminder that in order for Bermuda to turn around our fortunes, we require real transformation.”Mr Swan continued: “We [the UBP] were among the first to congratulate the Tourism Board in December 2011 for its findings which, among other things, called for the establishment of a tourism authority, gaming and other initiatives.“Since that time politics has prevailed with the introduction of a referendum bill but no indication that a gaming referendum will be forthcoming soon.”And he said that Bermuda’s tourism model before party politics had resulted in events such as the Newport Bermuda Race and the Goodwill Golf Tournament both of which had “stood the test of time”.“Whilst we have seen a plethora of politically-driven tourism initiatives come and go after failing, it is those initiatives created by private businessmen and entrepreneurs, as well as ‘good ideas’ studiously thought out and made to work, that have stood the test of time (later examples being International Race Weekend, the Marion to Bermuda Yacht Race and the Beach Tennis Tournament).“If one thing is true for a small island destination such as ours, it is that [lots of] small, sometimes simple, ideas can reap big and ongoing benefits. No individual Tourism Minister, regardless of how energetic he or she is, has a monopoly on good ideas.”Mr Furbert, a former UBP Cabinet Minister, said that the UBP and the One Bermuda Alliance had never said what their tourism authority would look like and The Royal Gazette has a responsibility to challenge the party on its position but had not done so.“To keep on crying we need a tourism authority means nothing, without defining what the structure looks like for them,” Mr Furbert said. “Every authority I have seen, every one of them is set up similar to the one we have. Whether it’s Singapore, South Africa, Bahamas, Aruba — all of them have very similar authorities to the one we have. And it’s time for the OBA and the UBP to clearly lay our what their authority looks like.”Mr Swan said: “The board we have today ‘under’ Minister Furbert does not have the degree of authority that this same Minister envisaged and supported in 1998 when he was a cabinet member.”