Tourism Minister David Allen’s recent announcement that Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) will pay passengers to eat in local restaurants sounds almost too good to be true. Yet it’s only a piece of a pattern that might improve Bermuda tourism altogether.

Although I understand the complaint that hotels hardly benefit from cruise ships, hoteliers would do better by working with the Ministry to optimise the remarkable opportunity that a few thousand people at a time in a Bermuda state of mind represent.

I know because I was able to convert a comparable opportunity almost 25 years ago in the Caribbean.

At the time, I was vice president-Public Affairs for Norwegian Caribbean Lines, predecessor of today’s NCL. The modern-day cruise industry was still new, essentially having been launched in the mid-1970s by the late Ted Arison with a converted passenger car ferry, the M/S Sunward.

Common practice at the time (perhaps still) allowed shipboard cruise directors to exploit passengers by steering them to ground tour operators and shops that kicked back commissions.

To make sure passengers booked the anointed services, cruise directors would tell passengers at de rigueur<$> briefings that as soon as they walked down a port gangplank, a sea of black faces would surround them, hands grabbing them for this cab and that trinket, all shouting in a language that, although English, was no English they would understand. More anxiety-inducing talk followed.

For NCL’s Jamaica ship, M/S Starward<$>, colleagues and I proposed an alternative that Ted quickly accepted. On afternoons following the cruise director’s briefings, we could introduce Jamaica more fully and fairly.

We developed several activities that Bermuda could adapt.

[bul]Each week we set aside one cabin for use by a Jamaican Family in Residence, selected by the Jamaica Tourist Board. On the ship’s full Sunday at sea, the family that afternoon told passengers about life in Jamaica. Mom, dad and the kids each spoke. They showed copies of the Jamaica Gleaner and schoolbooks. They played music and explained dialect. They told about their church, about civic life, about work and home and about celebrating births and deaths.

[bul]The family set up shore visits to schools and community centres where passengers could have lunch (which wasn’t covered by their all-inclusive cruise fare). The foods were local, their shapes and names colourfully chalked on blackboards. Kids, locals and passengers all ate together.

[bul]The family arranged walking tours in ports of call led by ship waiters and room stewards that lived there. Passengers who went along basked in celebrity because their guides were much admired by single women and many school kids for their well paying jobs. Passengers loved being taken to yards of mangoes and papayas, meeting the hoi polloi, who of course were utterly distinct personalities, their English easily understood and always charming, given the source of introductions.

[bul]By pre-arrangement, some few passengers could spend the entire day ashore with a local family. Sometimes the ship’s schedule allowed passengers to attend a rehearsal of the Jamaica Folk Singers or other arts group.

NCL gave each Jamaican shipboard family $100 credit for on-board hostings, and the family otherwise made itself available to passengers.

During a debriefing toward the end of each cruise, passengers frequently declared that the Jamaican family programme was the best part of the experience, that they had never known Jamaica was so interesting and that they were coming back to stay ashore. A network news magazine and many newspapers reported on the programme.

Bermuda of course differs from Jamaica yet faces the same opportunity. Many passengers on Bermuda-bound ships represent potential return shoreside visitors. How to convert more of them?

I have heard that the Ministry of Tourism does an on-board presentation. I don’t know what this consists of but I can imagine that it’s more touristy than what I have in mind.

People respond best to people. I can easily imagine two or three Bermuda Families in Residence on today’s larger cruise ships. I can envision a “Bermuda track” for interested passengers that might include a showing of the film When Voices Rise<$>, a slide presentation by the Bermuda Masterworks Foundation, perhaps another by David Wingate on Bermuda ecology and another by the Bermuda National Trust.

Because some people learn in a more adventurous way than others, some people would attend these shipboard presentations on the way down while others, after the few days in Bermuda, on the way back. The trick is to extend the Bermuda experience more fully both before and after passengers’ time ashore.

On board the Jamaica ship, none of the passengers who took part in any of the alternative programs felt they were missing out on the fun. To the contrary, they were adding to their fun. I suspect the same would be true of Bermuda and many more than today would return to stay in hotels.

Writer Herb Hiller lives in Georgetown, Florida. He first visited Bermuda while in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1958 and returned most recently during last year’s Society of American Travel Writers convention and again this past spring. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic Traveler and the Washington Post. His next article about Bermuda will appear this fall in Water’s Edge.