15 September, 2014

Dear Sir,

As investors in Bermuda (we have a fractional ownership at Tucker’s Point Club) and frequent visitors to the island for over 30 years, we have watched the decline of the tourism leg of your economy with dismay.

So, we offer up this modest proposal for helping to revive tourism. This may not be a new idea, but we believe the time is now ripe for it. The gist of the concept is that Bermuda would entice one to three cruise ship companies to put a fleet of three small ships in Bermudian waters, possibly year-round. These would dock at each main port: St George’s, Hamilton, and Dockyard around the island on a two day, two day, three day schedule.

So one ship, let us call it the SS St George’s, would be based in St George’s. It would be a ship accommodating about 400 passengers in 4-star and better rooms. It would sail Sunday afternoon to Hamilton, just as Hamilton’s home ship, the SS Hamilton leaves for the Dockyard where it replaces the SS Dockyard which heads to St George’s. So the ships rotate between the ports of the island over the course of a week. All the ships should be able to navigate the town cut at St George’s.

The SS St George’s would be the most elegant, exclusive, and expensive of the three ships. It would be run by a cruise line familiar with the clientele it would attract, a company like Viking River Cruises. Indeed the concept is very similar to a river cruise, except that the ships are designed to operate in the open ocean and would be circumnavigating an island rather than cruising along a river. The target demographic would be the 55 and over age group.

The SS Hamilton would be a slightly larger ship of about 500 passengers it would contain a casino which would operate when the ship is in Hamilton or the Dockyard from something like 7pm to 1am. The accommodations would be 3-star to 4-star, but mostly 3-star. Norwegian Cruise lines would be an example of the type of operator for this ship. The target market is the 25 to 35 age group.

The SS Dockyard would be an even larger ship of about 750 passengers offering 2 ½ -star to 3 ½-star accommodations. It would be the most family friendly targeting the 35 to 55 year old demographic. Think Carnival Cruises.

While the SS Hamilton will be the only ship with a casino, any tourist to the island would be able to use the casino when it was open, subject to safety restrictions on the number of passengers. The casino would be an experiment before spending huge sums on a land-based casino. If it cannot make money except by letting Bermudians gamble, then I think Bermuda should forgo gambling as a source of income. The goal should be to extract money from tourists, not from Bermudians.

None of these ships would have extensive on board entertainment. Instead, Bermudians would be expected to step up and provide onshore entertainment venues. Similarly, they would not have restaurants able to seat all the passengers, except for a breakfast buffet offered over the course of several hours. For lunch or dinner the on board restaurants would only be able to handle 50 percent of so of the passengers and the rest would be encouraged to go ashore to eat, possibly using a dine-around programme offered as part of the cruise package.

We would expect each ship would have package deals that include airfare from a gateway city, perhaps even having specially chartered aircraft and offer 3, 5 and 7 day cruises. Most people would probably opt for a cruise such that they join the ship when it is in St George’s and is convenient to the airport, but because the ships just circle the island they can arrive any day and still board their ship.

Compared to a regular cruise where you spend about 3 days staring at empty ocean and have only a couple of days to try and explore Bermuda, I think these ships will offer a superior experience, but the volume is small enough that it should not cannibalise the existing offerings on the giant ships. The excursion options will be much better since people will have time to do historical fort tours, railway trail tours, golf outings, scuba, fishing, and snorkelling trips, etc.

Basically, these would be floating hotels, and we would hope much easier to get built than land-based hotels have been. Better to preserve your few remaining open spaces.

Part of the deal with the cruise lines is that a significant number of the crew be Bermudian.

Being able to be provisioned every few days, and not requiring much in the way of crew accommodations (the Bermudian crew can get off at the end of their shift and go home to sleep in their own beds.) These ships, while small, would be able to devote a larger percentage of their space to passengers.

One final observation, your taxi drivers are wonderful and the cabs are roomy and comfortable, but because tourists cannot rent cars on the island, you need to offer multi-day taxi passes for a price equivalent to renting a small SUV in New York city for an equivalent number of days. In other words you pay a flat fee and get a card that pays for unlimited use of any taxis (and better yet, also buses) for the term of the pass. Like everything else today, it could be based on a smart phone app.

Gary & Joanna Fisher