November 19, 2005

Dear Sir,

Mr Vanderpool-Wallace, the new Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, gave an interview to your newspaper (?Don?t focus on numbers ? expert?, October 29) in which he urged Bermuda to deliver a quality experience, adding ?nothing else would work ... you have to deliver an unforgettable experience ... which will lure potential visitors to your shores?. In a parallel article (?Euro travel execs see the Bermuda product?) Mr Thomas McDonald (who has the glorious mouthful of Regional Manager of the United Kingdom/Europe Sales for the Bermuda Department of Tourism as a title) said ?the awareness of Bermuda is not there in Europe so we?re starting from scratch?. He went on to say ?one of the mistakes Bermuda has made in the past was comparing ourselves to the Caribbean while we should be comparing ourselves to Mauritius or Seychelles or even Europe?.

Bermuda was colonised by Europeans (remember?) who even several hundred years ago were clearly not blind to the Island?s charms ? or have we forgotten this in the haste to release ourselves from the misery of being, as Premier Alex Scott has it, ?like a step-child? to Great Britain?

As recently as the 1950s and 60s Bermuda was well known and recognised world-wide as somewhere redolent of European charm and grace with the benefit of some balmy breezes thrown in with delightful home grown culture. It was somewhere people aspired to go, featured in films starring Cary Grant who epitomised Anglo-American charm and in George Cukor?s 1939 movie ?The Women? starring Norman Shearer and Joan Crawford, it was held up as The Place To Go.

How the world ? and Bermuda ? has changed since then. There are very few things that make Bermuda an unforgettable experience at the moment when you?re up against the rest of the world.

At the risk of encouraging further fun flings with Government money being spent on educational trips, has Mr McDonald been to Mauritius or the Seychelles? If he has, he will no doubt remember the extraordinary hotels run by small armies of staff, immaculate, smiling and ever helpful to the last. He will recall the unspoilt coastlines where it is usually impossible to see another hotel from your own because development has been so sensibly and sensitively controlled.

Hotels are built or renovated with an ethical policy of minimum environmental impact, from renewable and sustainable sources. South East Asia and its outlying islands have a workforce of millions ? to the extent that hotels have staff whose sole job it is to clean the sunglasses of guests on the beach (that flying sand is such a pest) and where people are employed year round to pick up fallen frangipani petals which are then plucked and scattered in your bath at night (drawn by yet another smiling and obliging maid). Can Bermuda even hope to compete with this?

Europeans of the type which Bermuda ? or Mr. McDonald ? wishes it could attract have the whole world open to them. It is not true that it is inconvenient for people on the Continent to fly first to Heathrow, travel to Gatwick and then fly on to Bermuda; for a start, it is possible to fly directly into Gatwick from many European countries. In any event, people who are keen and have the means to travel think nothing of flying first to, say, Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Milan to catch a flight to Dubai and then onto the Maldives or Sri Lanka which is three times as long a journey as getting to Bermuda. The point is not the journey but the destination.

It is a nonsense to say that Europeans are unaware of Bermuda. More truthful would be to say that with the increasing ease and affordability of global travel, people have an unprecedented choice of destination. Where would you rather go to for your island holiday? somewhere far flung, unspoilt by local developers where the service is unparalleled, the hotels breathtaking, sensitive to their situation but without forsaking every modern convenience, with an indigenous, rich culture, exciting food and where the weather is permanently fabulous? Or Bermuda, where you will stay in an overpriced and often uninspired hotel with a service informed by the worst of American standards and a capital boasting few marvellous old fashioned shops (RIP Trimingham?s et al) but t-shirts and ?souvenirs?? Restaurants not capitalising and expanding on what the island has developed as a kitchen but watered down versions of European cuisine ? or ?safe? American food?

Bermuda sold itself down the river when we brought our culture wholesale from the USA (if anyone thinks the influence of television is not invidious they need look no further than our shores) and then encouraged bigger and bigger cruise ships full of low-spending passengers. If Two Rock passage gets blasted to allow even bigger ships, the sound reverberating in everyone?s ears won?t be the shattered reefs but the echo of the final nail being banged into the coffin.

You can employ all the tourism czars you like, hire and fire various marketing companies (good riddance to Hills Balfour who were publishing pictures of Natural Arches in the UK press long after it succumbed to a hurricane - they were clearly not as well informed as much as well paid) and give people longer and longer titles until they become veritable PooBahs of obfuscation. Bermuda cashed in early on mass tourism, learnt the hard way it is not sustainable and now wants high quality, high spending tourists back. The product has gone, it?s too late.

Without rebuilding the entire island, maybe we could consider investing in a future as ?Zurich-sur-mer? and encouraging the redevelopment of hotels to become world-class business hotels rather than second-rate tourist ones and thereby match the hard work that the business community does on the island. International business is attracted to Bermuda for various reasons but there will be opportunity and jobs for all, at all levels, if the future of ?tourism? is managed by looking forward and embracing change, not hearkening after the good old days.

Those hotels who have managed to cling on their land, staff and values (most notably the privately owned cottage colonies) could offer what they are uniquely placed to do so and the rest could redevelop to offer everything the businessman needs. If the Government manage to make a success keeping international businesses happy (and who knows what will happen if a hasty dash for independence succeeds) the hotels could enjoy high occupancy and the island benefit in all sectors year round.