AFTER 30 years in the tourism industry, Derek Morris has learned that the only guarantor of success, for Bermuda Island Cruises (BIC) and for Bermuda tourism generally, is a relentless focus on the satisfaction of the customer.

His route to buying out BIC from then-owner Kitson & Co. would have been hard to chart. When he left school, he was uncertain what courses he would take at college, and he couldn't decided whether to pursue his enthusiasm for physical education or music, or both.

"Music was at the forefront of my mind for the longest time," recalled Mr. Morris, " so I joined a band and did that thing for a time. Meanwhile, I was working as an accountant for a firm of architects at that time, in the early '70s, and working towards an accounting degree by correspondence.

"But my problem was that I had a band going nights, and I had to travel to the Caribbean in my job, and it was getting in the way of my music! You can tell that my priorities were all in the wrong place!"

Mr. Morris decided that he could not allow travel to the Caribbean to interrupt his love of music, so he took a job with Kitson & Co. which would allow him to "boogie" nights.

"They owned the BIC then, and my first job was entertaining on the boats, talking to the tourists, and occasionally playing for them," Mr. Morris reminisced.

"But Kitson also had a group tour department, and the guy who ran that was getting ready to retire, so they offered me that position, which covered everything from airport transportation to entertainment to sightseeing. I did that from 1978 to about 1984, when my brother Donald and I decided we were going to buy BIC and the group tour business.

"The group business was growing, and Donald was building new boats. He was really the leading force in all of this, and we just thought we would like to go on our own."

The first priority was to replace the ageing fleet of wooden boats with bigger boats which would give more flexibility in sightseeing, group parties and entertainment.

"BIC did trips to Hawkins Island, and at that point Donald had built three new boats, one of his own, and the Georgiana and the Reef Explorer. Then, with Herbie Adderley, he built the Elizabeth.

"Before we had been just doing day trips in the glass-bottom boats, but the new boats allowed us to do much more, group charters and evening tours."

While Donald concentrated on the operations of the boats, Derek focused on development of the group tour business.

"The group business was changing," explained Mr. Morris, "and we were trying to tap into that; the incentive business started to grow once the Southampton Princess was built, and we tried to grow with it.

"At that time, there were very few places to hold an event or party. Bermuda still struggles with that, but not as much."

The expansion plans of the brothers Morris hit a snag in the late '80s when they boldly bought the Haley Corporation, at that time the largest wholesaler of the Bermuda market, sending nearly 100,000 visitors a year to the island.

"The Bermuda Hotel Association (BHA) was not very keen on locals owning Haley, and were concerned about the financing. The deal got done, but three months later, it went almost totally belly up! Or rather, Haley's parent Transleisure went belly up, owing the BHA a lot of money, and because we were rather naive, we ended up holding the bag.

"It knocked us for a bit of a loop, because we had already paid for Haley, and we were stuck with the money we had borrowed to buy it, and now we were stuck with the money owed to the BHA!"

Mr. Morris remembered it as a time which tested the brother's senses of humour and testicular fortitude, and the storm was weathered.

"The great thing was that the group business just kept getting stronger and stronger," he said, "and our incentive business grew as Bermuda tourism started to lean more in that direction. The Southampton Princess realised that it had to cater more outside, and we had to look to new places to organise functions, so Dockyard and Fort St. Catherine, and Fort Hamilton opened up, and more catering companies opened up, and we had more flexibility doing things.

BIC has not been immune to the steady erosion of airborne visitors as the unchanging and gently deteriorating Bermuda product met growing competition from world-wide resorts and from increasingly sophisticated and demanding travellers.

"American hotels and resorts reinvented themselves in the '80s; tourists demanded more and better accommodation and amenities and activities, and new and bigger and better resorts and theme parks and special destinations catered to their requirements."

In the '90s, business started to fall off, and BIC had five boats in its fleet. The brothers knew that there would be few enthusiastic buyers in Bermuda's struggling tour boat market, so Donald Morris flew around the Caribbean to look for buyers for some of the fleet.

"He found a group in Cuba that was interested in leasing two of them, and later the Cuban government took them over, and decided it wanted to buy them, which was fine by us, so we sold them to Cuba."

Currently, BIC continues to operate the 80-foot Elizabeth and continues to manage and market the Reef Explorer, which was sold to BIC boat captain Michael Gladwin.

Mr. Morris has seen dramatic changes in the tourist industry and tries to remain hopeful about its prospects without underestimating the scope of the challenge.

"You could ask 100 different people and get 100 different answers as to the problem with tourism, but it's a big world, and a whole lot of competition going after the same market, which has got much more cost-conscious," he said.

"There's no doubt we got complacent; we always thought we were the best, and we didn't move with the times. One of my biggest disappointments was losing Marriott, which is a great hotel chain, but we gave them the shaft from the day they took over the Castle Harbour Hotel; they couldn't even get a liquor licence for their beach for the longest time."

Asked what three things Bermuda should do to rebuild tourism, Mr. Morris did not hesitate or equivocate.

"Put the customer first," he said. "If we aren't taking care of our customer, our visitor, we will never win this battle. Secondly, there's got to be much better dialogue between the BHA and the Ministry of Tourism. Thirdly, we have got to find the very best souls we can to be in this industry.

"When you look at the whole situation, it has simply taken us forever to learn to listen to the customer. I think we have to have a casino, just as one of the attractions of the whole package.

"If I had one wish, it would be that the hotels and the Government and everyone in the business from the taxi drivers to entertainers would put the customer first. It's what we do at BIC, and if we all try to do our best at everything we did, it would make a big difference.

"Our water tours are reasonably priced, but our season isn't long enough to make a living at it. In the industry generally, as boats wear out and their captains wear out, they are not being replaced.

"We have all got to get back to basics, and the essence of it is to find out what the customers want and give it to them!"