Beach Hotel have declared their stay the "best ever''.

The First Union National Bank has taken out an advertisement in today's Royal Gazette praising the hotel for exemplary service, even during the two-day dispute.

Included among the 143 bankers and their spouses were a group who missed a chartered bus tour of Hamilton when Public Transportation Board drivers refused to cross a picket line outside the hotel.

Despite that incident, the bank employees were generous in their praise of hotel management while in Bermuda.

Mr. Glenn Wilcox, president of the Asheville, North Carolina travel agency that organised the trip, said it was "the best incentive trip we've ever organised''.

"Management is working very hard to give us the very best service they can,'' he told a reporter after his clients were left standing on South Shore Road without buses to take them to Hamilton.

Another member of the same group, Mrs. Laurie Kaplan, said: "The hotel staff has really been bending over backwards to make things pleasant for us.'' And Mr. Mike Hunter, also from North Carolina, said it worked out better for him and his wife Elizabeth when they were unable to eat in the main dining room on Thursday night.

"We had individual reservations, but we ended up having one big party,'' Mr.

Hunter said.

In response to the hotel's attempts to break with the union, a group of workers disrupted breakfast in the main Elbow Beach dining room on the Thursday, then occupied the dining room and kitchen until about 8 p.m. that night.

The next day, management locked out protesting workers, who set up a picket line.

But after ten hours of talks on Friday, the two sides agreed to resume normal relations and refer their differences to the Essential Industries Disputes Settlement Board.

The hotel has resumed deduction of union dues from workers' paycheques.