Save tourism

July 23, 2008

Dear Sir,

I have visited Bermuda on a regular basis (one or two times a year) since 1957, with my family and alone for my "R&R". It is certainly worrisome to read of the wholesale disregard on the part of the government for what was a healthy tourist industry. Each and every year there seems to be less interest in saving tourism in Bermuda. I wonder why the taxi drivers and union representatives don't bring pressure on the government to improve their attitude and assist the hotels and guest houses.

Without the tourist the taxi business will go the way of many business in Bermuda. Also isn't it possible that the insurance businesses might be looking for friendlier islands to your South? I can then hear the government officials asking one another "where have the tourists gone?

JUNE B. MURTHA

Bedminster, New Jersey

New Bermuda turnoff

July 10, 2008

Dear Sir,

As visitors to your beautiful island, my wife and I have vacationed in Bermuda for the past thirty years. Having never missed a year and visiting, most years, multiple times, we estimate we have made some 75-80 vacation trips to what we have always considered our second home. But, that may well end shortly. Our Bermuda is quickly and heedlessly changing from a serene, visitor-friendly, beautiful island to a way station for corporate convenience and comfort. Congenial cottage colonies are fast becoming fractional ownership tracts, promoting sterile environments that compromise all that is so naturally beautiful about the island. Yes, there are still many of us who, for myriad reasons, are uninterested and turned off by the 'new' Bermuda.

Please don't think of us as just naive, ignorant malcontents who don't understand the 'realities' of the real world of business and finance. We are New Yorkers who have lived in the heart of the city our entire married lives. We, of all people, know of such realities. But, Bermudians must be careful. It seems that there is a real possibility that you are mortgaging your future and true identity to a fickle and opportunistic corporate world. Business environments change in an instant. Betting the island on one industry is risky at best. And how many average Bermudians are really benefiting through jobs and training?

Trimingham's, Smith's, Archie Brown's all gone. A bank to be the looming presence on Front Street. So sad. Horizons & Cottages, our home for years, now a depressing, hastily conceived 'bed & breakfast' with beautiful cottages standing depressingly vacant and an eerie feeling of emptiness pervasive through that vast acreage. Oh yes, and the plan is for it to become another fractional ownership tract! (Has anyone heard about the mortgage crisis and foreclosures in the States? Not too many people we know rushing to fractional ownership opportunities!). Maybe we are just old-fashioned, baby boomers lost in our own reverie of what was. But, we want to escape New York when we come to Bermuda not visit a smaller version of it! After 30 years, we are looking for another vacation destination which, while never replacing the Bermuda we knew and loved, we hope will come close to replicating the idyllic setting we will always remember and cherish. We feel the emptiness of losing a treasured part of our lives. And we know we are not alone.

GLENN SKLARIN

New York City