Bermuda's economy should take a look at the front section of this newspaper.

Remember that we are in the week before Mother's Day and that the cruise ships are back and the season is on. On Thursday the first section of this paper carried sale ads for H.A.&E. Smith Ltd. advertising 20 percent off luggage, a cash and carry sale of barbecues at Bermuda Gas, a Boyle's shoe sale, and 50 percent off at Solomon's jewellers.

Once it was unheard of to have sales as the season began.

In recent years visitor spending has been down because of the recession and a decrease in air arrivals. Until air arrivals can be corrected and the number of hotel bed nights sold increases, there is unlikely to be a great deal of improvement. At the same time, Bermudians are taking to the malls of America which employ Americans, not Bermudians, and which pay taxes in the United States and not in Bermuda. They also pay minimum wages and lower rates for such things as electricity.

If retailers begin to fail there will be little point in Bermudians bemoaning the fact by saying that we no longer have the stores we used to have. We know the reasons Bermudians shop abroad and some of those reasons are valid but some are not. People say that prices in Bermuda are too high but the total picture is much more complex than that.

One problem is that Bermudians often compare apples with oranges and equate the cost of quality goods in Bermuda with lesser quality products in the malls of America.

Another problem is that people who shop abroad may not include the cost of their trip, often a trip specifically for shopping, or the cost of import duties when they get back to Bermuda.

Then too many people shop abroad in outlet stores without considering that the outlets are selling last year's leftovers and are often selling unannounced seconds. Last year's goods can often be bought reasonably in Bermuda in sales but, somehow, that does not count in public thinking.

There have been huge efforts by merchandisers in recent years to bring their prices in line with suggested retail prices in the United States despite local importing costs and the high cost of doing business in Bermuda. All winter Front Street has been a building site as shop after shop renovated. Shops are staying open later, especially when cruise ships are in port, hoping to get every dollar they can. No longer are stores closed when visitors want to shop.

Harbour Nights are popular. There is a move afoot for Sunday shopping.

Despite all that, some of our major retailers are already downgrading the quality of their merchandise, presumably to boost the volume of sales by appealing to the numbers market. Yet a number of very classy new stores have opened and that is healthy. There are already too many outlets selling very similar T-shirts, some of them suggestive and some of them misleading.

The fact is that as a visitor destination, Bermuda is a package. Good shopping for which we have been famous thanks to the high standards of our merchants, is as much a part of the visitor package as sightseeing. It is especially important to Bermuda because our size precludes dealing in large numbers of visitors. We must go for quality clients and that requires quality shopping especially for visitors who arrive by air.