July 28, 2011Dear Sir,I had a young patient in recently who mentioned he was going to study tourism. The feedback he was getting from his friends for doing that was not all positive. But for me, being in a service industry and understanding how much fun it can be, I was delighted for him and we got on the subject of St George's or, rather, I got onto the subject as my hands were in the young man's mouth.On the subject of the site next to Fort St Catherine's, I just don't think we need another high-end hotel and not on that site. I think tourism needs to diversify more. We have Tucker's Point, which is high end, and we have the Fairmonts that do good business travel in town and family and convention travel in Southampton. Whenever Morgan's Point gets going, that will be another good spot for both harbour and golf activities. I hope the marina in St George's materialises, but the niche we haven't looked at for years is the college student or the under 30 crowd and the young at heart. And it is this group that we could market to in a big way by utilising the old Club Med site.We have a brown site there, and a lot of green space. I think it would be great to put a modest hotel on the brown site and do something like the raised tents that was done at 9 Beaches to minimise the ecological impact to the area. And bunkies to facilitate youth hostel type of accommodations. What we would be investing in would be our future. While we may not make the big bucks there, we would be marketing our Island for future tourism – a formula that worked for us in the past.This is probably the easiest and least expensive advertising. By marketing through colleges in the form of competition prize giveaways – ‘for you and 10 friends!' – or sending out package rates for group charters, it has got to be less expensive than magazine and television/cable advertising.The adjacent areas to the hotel site could really work for the whole product. There are some great little buildings across from Tobacco Bay that would make neat little boutiques for surf and snorkelling and paddle board shops; a bikini and beach wear shop, coffee shop and a deli. Bed and breakfast type of accommodations might be considered in the area. It would be neat if the old Gun Powder Tavern could be reinvented. Blackbeard's is already doing a great job of creating a fun, casual environment, as does the concession at Tobacco Bay. The area has great coastline, the fort is a wonderful backdrop and you can easily bike or walk into the Old Town. Having a road running through the site to get to the beach is not as big a deal with the young crowd so there is less pressure to take over the entire point and over-develop.This is all probably too late, which saddens me. I wish we could just take a step back and really have a hard look at what we are doing to the area. Bermuda is a tiny place with an amazing history and people. Building massive scale hotels belongs somewhere else, not there. Why do we need to look like every other place? It seems we are risking our authenticity. It seems like we are just panicking and losing control by allowing others to come in, make their money and go while leaving us with an important site, smothered by development.RONDA JAMES DDSPaget