And the statistics show October was bleak despite the fact the Island hosted the glitzy star-studded Bermuda Music Festival. While taxpayers shelled out $3 million to fly Beyonce, Alicia Keyes, UB40 and others to the Island in an attempt to woe visitors Bermuda actually saw a 17.9 percent drop in air arrivals. Originally the Department reported a 2.2 percent dip in arrivals for October 2008.

November, which was originally reported as maintaining the same level of arrivals as in 2007, really saw a 23.8 percent drop in arrivals.

December was another example of reported growth which turned out to be a double digit decline. At first it was reported that there had been a 6.8 percent jump in arrivals whereas the real numbers showed an 18.3 percent reduction in visitors flying to the Island.

Platinum Period?  Or DOA?  Overall, visitor expenditure was down in 2008 by 21.7 percent the equivalent of $111.4 million.

Driving down Front Street yesterday, the death of Bermuda retailing really struck home.  Empty storefronts.  This is a direct consequence of the Bermuda Government’s haphazard management of the tourism industry.

These numbers are really bleak – because they describe Bermuda’s position before the fallout of the economic crisis started.  We wish it was a trailing indicator but it’s a leading indicator that this year will be worse.  It is a stark reminder that Bermuda’s marketing is misdirected and that, far from being revitalised, our tourism product has been allowed to disintegrate.

Why him? Was the Rat Control Guy unavailable?  Did all the Cabinet Office sycophants get out of the room first?

The Tourism stats have been unreliable for many years.  One reason is that the statistics are gathered and interpreted by Tourism itself – making it very tempting to layer all sorts of spin on their compilation and release.  Moreover, the stats seem to mysteriously disappear from Government’s websites, making it nigh impossible for the public to track over time how Tourism is doing.

This should stop immediately.

I reiterate my earlier calls for Bermuda Government statistics to be entirely neutral and free from both departmental and political influence.  Here are some strategies adopted in other countries:

• Statistics must be gathered and analysed by Government’s Statistics Department, which is competent and relatively independent.
• The Stats team should release its results to the public and to Government at the same time (reducing the urge to pick out the most flattering data and craft a message for public consumption).
• The Stats team should independently choose how to present the data (reducing the spin surrounding statistics – by the time the public have had time to digest the numbers behind the hype, the news has moved on).
• The Stats team should choose the release dates for statistics (reversing the trend of choosing good days or fancy lunches for burying bad news).
• An independent watchdog should annually comment on the quality of the statistics and make binding recommendations for improvement.

Numbers that have been complied by amateurs, or massaged by interest parties, are not useful management tools.  Nor are they a fair scale for accountability.

The Royal Gazette points out the double tragedy of these failed statistics:  the 2009 budget for Tourism has been invested based on 2008 statistics that are now admitted to be incorrect.  Epic fail.

Sooner or later, you have got to question Dr. Brown’s track record as Minister of Tourism.

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?”