Today's Royal Gazette resurrects, courtesy of Tony Brannon, the issue of the value we get for our tax dollar out of the Ministry of Tourism. Economist Bob Stewart is a regular contributor to the Letters to the Editor page on this topic.
I've come around to this position after the past few years of declining arrivals but increased taxpayer funding. The DOT has turned into a huge money pit. It's not all their fault as they work at the direction of the Minister but I think the Minsitry needs to be overhauled. As Tony Brennan points out in today's story, if the DOT were to exist in the private sector it would have either been out of business or the employees replaced a long time ago.
In fact, the most promising thing to hit the tourism front recently is the competition to redevelop the Hamilton Waterfront, and that is - not surprisingly - a private sector driven project that the PLP will no doubt try and latch on to as their own.
One thing sums up the lack of need for a Department of Tourism staffed by career civil servants: there is no Department of International Business yet this industry, largely self regulating with Government facilitation, has rapidly superceded tourism as Bermuda's economic engine.
I don't think this can be understated.
The Ministry of Finance plays a high level role, the Registrar of Companies facilitates the setting up of companies and the industry has an advisory council made up of industry leaders. There is no budget!
So let's get rid of the Department of Tourism as we know it.
Let's have a budget that gets allocated to a private sector Tourism Authority who develops a strategic plan and spends the dollars with little bureucratic interference. The cost overhead of running a bloated Ministry would be removed, releasing more dollars for marketing and product development. The people whose jobs depend on the industry thriving, not union protection regardless of performance, would inevitably get creative and stand a much better chance at returning the industry to it's former glory days.
I'd argue that it would make more sense than the current status quo to take the $35 Million dollar budget, drop the marketing and use it to buy 70,000 airline tickets (assumed $500 each) and give them away to tourists in our key markets!
So while the Minister may want to dismiss Tony Brannon with a comment like: "My life doesn’t revolve around what Tony Brannon thinks", he's got a point. Unlike the Minister, who appears to have total job protection from Alex Scott in return for loyalty, Tony's livelihood (and those of the thousands of Bermudians working in the industry) are inextricably tied to a successful tourism product.
To add insult to injury the Minister herself stands to get a hefty pay raise in this year's budget, despite presiding over the continuing decline - and embarrassing Hawaii episode - of Bermuda's tourism product.
