When the Bermuda flag appeared during the athletes’ parade at the 2012 London Olympics, the most insight a TV commentator could offer about Bermuda and our athletes was something akin to: “And it wouldn’t be an Opening Ceremony without the Bermuda shorts. Glad to see they made it out of the Triangle.”

The comment was indicative of how the wider world perceives our tiny, mid-Atlantic outpost.

For 23-year-old marketing student and lifelong hospitality worker Kharis Brooks, the quip was significant because the commentator could offer nothing more than a nod toward our novel shorts and that eponymous, mythological polygon.

“Every single time I meet someone in the UK, they ask where I’m from because they hear the accent,” said Kharis. “After I say I’m from Bermuda, the first thing they say is: ‘Oh, like the Triangle.’”

Sound familiar?

The problem, according to Kharis, is public relations.

“It’s a PR issue. It’s about how your public see you,” she said. “If that’s all they know you for, and that’s all you allow them to know you for, it’s really hard to escape from that bubble, which is where I think the confusion between marketing and PR gets lost in Bermuda. There’s lots of change that is needed in Bermuda, but you have to change how the public and how outsiders see you.”

If marketing is meant to promote a product, PR encourages understanding and, ideally, positive associations toward that product, mostly through word-of-mouth. That difference, said Kharis, appears to be lost on Bermuda.

“I think there’s too much focus on changing Bermuda to meet a certain standard, and not enough focus on what the world thinks about Bermuda already. There’s all this talk about gaming and making amendments to this and that, which is all well and good — innovation is fantastic — but I think if you don’t understand what the public thinks of your product, it doesn’t matter what you do to your product. You can change it a hundred and one different ways; if they don’t know about it, or don’t know enough about it, it’s all kind of wasted money.”

Kharis spent her early years learning the art of hospitality from her grandmother, Celia Dawkins, at the Dawkins Manor guest house. Most recently, she has spent her summers working at the front desk of the Fairmont Southampton Princess. Last summer, Kharis spent eight weeks in New York City, interning with Bermuda’s PR representatives, Lou Hammond and Associates.

Now in her final year at the University of West England in Bristol, where she is earning her degree in Marketing and Communications, Kharis hopes to return to Bermuda to “reinvent the way PR is seen in Bermuda as a whole, but particularly for tourism”.

“I spent this summer in New York listening to people who had no idea Bermuda was two hours away from the East Coast. They still think we’re in the Caribbean. They have no idea it’s a British territory. They associate us with wealth, at least they do in the States; in the UK they think it’s like Jamaica or Grenada, or St Kitts.

“I see Bermudians having a lot of ideas in terms of campaigns and strategies and even legislation, but I think none of it can really succeed unless it has good PR. A lot of people don’t seem to be connecting those two dots.

“I feel like in Bermuda, PR is seen as something that’s not needed, or it’s just not managed effectively. PR is about maintaining a certain image and essentially being a body guard between an entity and the press, and making sure everything is positive in the way that you want it to be constructed, the way you want to be seen. I think too many things slip between the cracks, and they aren’t managed to a level that would be standard elsewhere.

“I have a lot of energy when it comes to PR, and I want to bring that energy to Bermuda. I do know a lot of professionals here that are doing a fantastic job, but on the whole it just seems that, I don’t know, someone needs to shake things up.”

A quick and easy step to changing public perception through public relations, said Kharis, would be to offer free Wi-Fi on the beaches.

“Having free Wi-Fi across the beaches would let people [promote Bermuda for you.] If you look at any hashtag of islands in the Caribbean or any destination really, people post picture after picture on sites like Instagram of where they’re staying and what they’re eating, or what beach they’re currently on.”

In marketing terms, the idea is called “earned media”, as opposed to “paid media”. The idea is that, without paying a dime, people will promote your product simply because they like it. Enabling people to ‘Tweet’ from Bermuda’s beaches, or instantly post pictures of their vacation, will go a long way to changing public perception, said Kharis.

Ultimately, she said, it comes down to education in the hospitality industry.

“Hospitality workers don’t go the extra mile in Bermuda anymore. I have said, for I don’t know how many years, it’s going to have to start in school, not hiring from the hotels. At the end of the day, if you see hospitality as an art-form, and as a part of our culture rather than an actual trade, it has to start from an educational level, rather than an orientation that lasts four days where you learn about a company’s mission and stuff like that. If children were taught about hospitality in school, or even just learning more about our history and culture in regards to hospitality ...”

The hospitality legends of old Bermuda, known for working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, are a rare breed these days, said Kharis.

“When you do come across a really hard worker in the hotel industry in Bermuda, they almost always have an older relative in the industry. Someone who taught them. Maybe their uncle was a bellman, or their aunt was a housekeeper, something where from a very young age, whether they realise it or not, they are being taught what it means to be respectful and cordial, just really caring about someone’s day. You do find them, but almost always when you sit and talk with them, they have a relative, or someone who was involved, that taught them the way.”