Tourist Arrivals up 22.9%
Today's RG has a story that tourism arrivals for 2006 were up 22.9% over the previous year. Air arrivals are back to their pre 9/11 levels. It looks as though the diligent work of the Premier and the Department of Tourism (not some ‘tourism authority’) are paying off nicely. 2007 is also off to a nice start with arrivals up 23% over the first 3 months of the year.
It’s interesting also to note that after a failed attempt to somehow fool people into thinking the numbers not significant the UBP has gone silent on the issue. I’m guessing that they are still working out their internal differences on the issue, maybe sometime soon we’ll hear a coherent alternative, but it’s hard to argue against success. That is, unless you are Bob Richards where you are bold enough to state that, “Bermuda should realise that we will never return to the glory days or tourism and that it is now and should be treated as a support industry.” That’s a vision to believe in……
I'm still troubled by these numbers as I described on my own blog: http://www.dpitcher.com/2007/04/business_or_ple.html
What are the numbers in reference to "Tourists" in the breakdowns I suggested?
Suggesting simply 'arrivals' is ambiguous and potentially very misleading and I do not believe it is a fair statistic that truly represents the state of our Tourism industry.
While perhaps arrivals does mean tourists, I would like this clarification as if it does not then we may well be setting ourselves up for failure as the only true measure of our success is how much money we make from Tourism, not the number of people who visit.