Vexed Bermoothes

The Premier today announced that, oops, Government found another accounting problem and that air arrivals last year were actually down a hell of a lot more than previously admitted.

In fact, air arrivals were down 13.72% instead of 4.62%.  Ooops. Tourism spending was down 22.3% – before the recession even got rolling.

That’s pretty bad, don’t you think?

Errors like this call into question any facts that come from the Ministry of Tourism.  It’s hard to believe the Ministry’s insistence that the Music Festival was a success when they just dropped the number of arrivals during that period by 20 percent.

Personally, I don’t buy the excuse that the problem was caused by expats being counted as tourists.  The numbers would be much larger.

There was a lot of murmur when the original numbers came out – they just didn’t match up with what hoteliers were experiencing, nor what the average Johnny can see on the street.  Surely, the Minister of Tourism would also have seen the disconnect?

The situation has gotten even worse since 2008.  From what I am told, hotel occupancies are at all time lows.  And Q1 numbers are due out.

So, it is convenient that the Ministry will stop releasing numbers until a new “Confidence Committee” signs off on them.  Is that called “buying time?”