After more than a decade of closure, the St George’s Club is looking at reopening its restaurant.

The former eatery, known as The Margaret Rose, closed when the 18-acre property changed hands.

In the years since then the restaurant space has been used for storage.

“I can’t say when it will reopen,” operations manager Dee Dee Furbert said. “It might be at the end of the year or it could be next year.”

She thought there was room for another restaurant in St George, because they all offer something different.

“It would be good for our guests to have a restaurant on site,” she said.

Ms Furbert has been with the St George’s Club for more than 40 years and has seen seven different owners pass through. The most recent is Hotelco.

“They are affiliated with the St Regis board of directors,” she said. “St Regis is run by Marriott, but we are run by Hotelco, which is independent.”

This season she has seen the window between hotel bookings and arrivals shrink dramatically, with some guests waiting until their flight touches down to book.

Ms Furbert thought part of it was the stress of life in the United States.

“People are booking last minute girls’ trips,” she said. “They want to come here, because they consider Bermuda to be safer than some Caribbean destinations. They might come for just two or three days.”

She thought this summer was better for tourism than last year because there seems to be more things to do.

“Dockyard has had its revitalisation period,” she said. “St George’s is now getting its time to shine. There are so many restaurants on offer in the town. There are also historical sites and a supermarket.”

Ms Furbert started out as a waitress at the St George’s Club, but after 18 months the managers recognised other talents and started to train her in different hotel departments.

“They saw potential in me,” Ms Furbert said.

She loves coming to work every day, never knowing what problem she will have to deal with.

“One day, a frequent visitor called and said to expect her husband,” she said. “Two weeks later, a box arrived. I didn’t know what was in it. I was shaking it and it sounded like rice.”

She was shocked to find the box contained not rice, but the ashes of the caller’s husband.

“We called her and she asked us to hold on to the urn until she arrived,” she said. “I also had to go to the post office to get all the paperwork associated with the urn. Now, whenever people say someone will be passing through the hotel, I say, alive or dead?”

She is also seeing a change in the seasonal nature of Bermuda tourism.

“We used to have three seasons; the high season, the shoulder season and the winter season, mostly for golfers,” she said. “Now, hoteliers largely have only one season to make money in.”

Ms Furbert is looking forward to the day when the Fairmont Southampton and Elbow Beach hotels reopen.

“It will be good for everyone to have those hotels open again,” she said.

One of her major concerns is the lack of young Bermudians coming into the hotel industry. She is the third generation of her family to work in hospitality in St George. Her children are working in other industries.

“We need to get the younger generation into hospitality,” she said. “They do not seem to have that push to get into it. They are very into high-tech.”

She said the unsociable hours required by hospitality makes it a difficult choice.

“Whenever we get a young person who wants to work in hotels, we all fuss over them,” Ms Furbert said.