The third-ranking civil servant in the Department of Tourism has left the industry for a change of scenery after 30 years.

Assistant Tourism Director Carol Wills said she notified Director Gary Phillips of her decision to retire early last year to take advantage of her option to retire at 55.

She only just made it.

"I worked up until the day before my 56th birthday,'' she noted.

Her career began at the bottom of the corporate ladder as a secretary at the then-Trade Development Board.

"(The late) Sir Henry Vesey was the chairman of the Board at that time; that's really going back a long way,'' Ms Wills said.

After a few years, she moved to the Cabinet Office and eventually became the Information Officer.

But she returned to the Department of Tourism in 1973 as manager of Information Services.

"I did all of the literature, brochures and updates and designing and so forth,'' Ms Wills said. "And I also did hotel inspections, so I had dual responsibilities.'' And when Tourism moved from its Front Street office to Global House in the early 1980s, she became assistant director of administration and "took over all sorts of things''.

"There was never a dull moment,'' Ms Wills recalled. "I was still responsible for hotel inspecting and licensing, and I also worked with all the cruise ships and did a little scheduling and applications.

"I was there for 32 years, but I never felt like I had just one job because it was always different and that's why I stayed for so long.'' Ms Wills has moved away from the tourism spotlight, but she is keeping a watchful eye on those who follow her.

"I don't know what's going to happen to the tourism industry, but I do believe that the change in Government is going to make a difference one way or the other,'' she said.

"There's a lot of new ideas. A lot of exciting initiatives that are being developed. And maybe that's what we need.'' Ms Wills went on to say a crucial aspect of the Island's redevelopment of the industry -- which she said began years ago -- was in thinking differently about what visitors wanted.

"We know we can only have a limited number of visitors and so we have to go for the very, very upper end of the visitor market,'' she said.

"And if you're going in that direction you have to be able to offer what that visitor wants. They'll pay for it, but they want absolutely top notch service.

"I think that the gradual movement away from the big resort hotel and toward more condominiums and condominium hotel type things may be the right direction to go in. And that's certainly the direction that we're headed in at the moment.

"And in the meantime I think that we have to maintain our standards and our regulatory environment. Bermuda has probably one of the most regulated environments certainly of any of our competition and I think that that's been the thing that's saved us and has certainly led us to be what we are today.

"By that I mean regulating the number of cruise ships that come in, regulating the number of hotel beds, even Planning regulations.

"I think all of that has preserved Bermuda to be the best that it can be.

"We know that the islands to the south of us, for example, are inundated with cruise ships and they can't get out from under them. They've lost the opportunity to control their own destiny and Bermuda still does to a large extent.'' Ms Wills cited global competition and cheaper airfares to other destinations as the two major factors which had adversely affected local tourism numbers.

But she also said the Island had not "always taken the best of care of'' its product.

"We need to upgrade our product. We need to make sure that it matches what the visitor wants,'' she said.

However, Ms Wills pointed out she had seen progress in the last two years and was optimistic about the future.

"I think there is a difference,'' she said. "It's a very slow process because you have to re-educate your community.'' Ms Wills now serves as the coordinator for the Tall Ships 2000 project which plans to celebrate the Millennium by bringing more than 100 ships to the Island.

It is not a quiet retirement, but it is exactly what she wanted.

"I decided to take that option because I really wanted to go out and do something different,'' she admitted."I didn't really want to sit behind a desk and behind a computer for the rest of my life.

"It's exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to get involved in something that was more active.'' New career: Carol Wills, shown in this 1985 file picture, has retired from the Department of Tourism.