TOMORROW Stena Line will launch its high speed jumbo ferry on the Larne Stranraer route. The ferry costs £70 million. The onshore facilities to cope with it at either port are costing £30 million. All in all, an investment of £100 million in developing tourism in Northern Ireland.

How does that investment look now after Drumcree and the bomb at the Killyhevlin Hotel? "We won't allow ourselves to be cowed by what happened," said a Stena spokesman. But Stena's investment is committed it has little choice but to proceed.

Mr Billy Hastings, who has by far the biggest stake in the North's hotel business, fears that only investment already committed will go ahead. What has happened is a major setback for an industry that was going so well." Investment decisions on the future of Northern Ireland tourism must now considered to be "on hold".

For Mrs Marian Brady, proprietor of the Glenluce guest house in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, what has happened is a tragedy. She said she left Belfast five years ago with her husband two children to enjoy a better quality of life in the seaside town. They sank their life savings into the Glenluce.

"The day the IRA announced the ceasefire, there was an eerie silence. The day after, the telephone never stopped ringing. Ballycastle had a 300 per cent increase in visitors last summer. People did not realise how beautiful the north Antrim coast is. We worked seven days a week from April on." Last Wednesday, Mrs Brady's guest house was empty.

Mr John Herlihy, proprietor of the Portaferry Hotel in Co Down, said most of his out of state bookings (including the Republic) have been cancelled. "It's a wipe out. And next year looks like a cliff with no foot holds." Before the IRA cease fire, tourism in the North was building up, but very slowly. Then it boomed last year. The first sign of trouble was the Canary Wharf bomb in February.

Mr Ian Henderson, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, has not had time to consider changes in his marketing strategy. The board is too busy dealing with day today problems after what he described as "a week of madness'. Mr Henderson said the board must revert to a role familiar to it for many years reassuring people it is safe to holiday in Northern Ireland.

MR Herlihy said the tourist board workshop for foreign operators was held two years ago in the Killyhevlin Hotel. "Now they saw the bomb on their television and they say `That's we stayed.'

Henderson said many people in the North have described their heartbreak this week after the joy of receiving so many visitors in 1995. "We are back to the bad old time as the owner of the Killyhevlin said, we must start again.

There is some evidence, Mr Henderson said, that people left Northern Ireland after last week's violence to continue their holiday in the Republic. A spokesman for Bord Failte confirmed that callers to its overseas offices were inquiring about changing their itineraries to avoid Northern Ireland.

The largest German tour operator, DER, has amended its all Ireland tours to exclude Northern Ireland. A spokesman for Aer Lingus said it had only a small number of cancellations on its New York Shannon Belfast service, which was introduced last year.

Mr Howard Allen of the Beeches Country House in Antrim said he had had no cancellations. "We have people here from Canada and Singapore. There's a golf outing coming up and we have people from the Republic staying."

Insofar as there is a problem, Mr Allen believed, it is confined mainly to coach tour parties.

The chairman of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Mr Roy Bailie, said yesterday the level of cancellations appeared to vary from location to location. "Some hotels have reported cancellation rates of 50 per cent, which will result in considerable loss of revenue."

On a hopeful note, he concluded. "The situation now seems to have stabilised and the industry is making every effort to regain lost ground".

The problem is, the words "stability" and "Northern Ireland" do not yet fit comfortably in the same sentence.