On with the Off-Season

In Bermuda he shuns taxicabs and put-puts around on rented motor scooters. In the Virgin Islands he ducks the fancy restaurants and lunches on a sandwich at the beach. In Puerto Rico he chooses a poolside beer over a banana daiquiri. His credentials: an economy-flight air ticket and a fistful of travel-agency coupons. This is the summer tourist. And thrifty though he may be, he is creating a bustling new industry from Bermuda and the Caribbean west to Mexico--a sun belt better known for its winter lures than its summer tours. Says a busy Nassau hotel manager: "There has never been a summer like it."

Nassau's Royal Victoria Hotel, open this summer for the first time in years, is nearly booked solid, and the beaches are beginning to look like Coney Island. Anyone who wants to go to Puerto Rico had better start getting in line. Weekend planes are full into September, and San Juan hotels are clipping along at 80% to 90% capacity--despite the fact that 1,293 new rooms were added last year with another 895 abuilding. In most of the Virgin Islands the summer trade runs only 10% to 15% behind the winter season; St. Thomas' three biggest hotels--the Hilton, Bluebeard's Castle and Caribbean Beach--are all reserved into September. And Jamaica, though famed as a winter playground, now draws almost half its 200,000 yearly visitors during the summer season.

Castles & Cottages. Why the summer boom? Bermuda has had it for years, and recognizes no real "season." Until recently, however, tourists rarely ventured farther south for the summer.

Too hot, they thought, and then there was the expense. But now, ever more affluent--and fed up with the crowds at home--they are migrating to the islands and finding them not so prickly.* Only too happy to help are the hotels and airlines with off-season (roughly from May through November) prices 20% to 40% lower than winter rates.

In fashionable Montego Bay on Jamaica's north coast, summer rates for a single room without meals run as low as $6 to $10 a day. For a trifle more the tourist can move into Sam Lord's Castle, a modernized, 133-year-old manse on the southeast coast of Barbados. Winter rate for a single room including meals: $20 to $40 a day. Summer rate: $15 to $25. Last April, Cancel Bay Plantation in the Virgin Islands began offering a special package for honeymooners: champagne on arrival, free gifts, nine days and eight nights of beachfront living, all meals, a day's shopping in nearby St. Thomas (boat and car transportation included) --all for $158 per person. "Suddenly, wham!" says the manager. "Everything is really moving." Over at San Juan's newly opened, 452-room Americana

Hotel, occupancy early this month was down to 70% when the hotel and Trans Caribbean Airways began offering a double for seven nights and eight days, with two meals daily, plus a round-trip ticket from New York, for $239. Within two weeks business jumped to 95% of capacity. Some hotels do not charge for kiddies 14 and under; when the tiniest members are along, they throw in free baby sitters.

Nothing Royal. Getting the summer customer into the hotel, though, is only half the battle. Coming from the center of the pie rather than the upper crust, the off-season tourist makes his dollar stretch a country mile. Many Nassau bars and restaurants close down for the summer, and the specialty-shop operators yearn for winter's big-time spenders. "In the winter they buy Royal Crown Derby," says a Virgin Islands china-shop owner. "In the summer, it's Heinrich." Social directors sometimes grouse that the summer people are unschooled in resort life. "They don't play golf or tennis," complains one Bermuda hotelman. "They don't sail, water ski, swim or skindive. They're spectators, TV watchers and sunbathers. You have to show them how to have fun."

But they are generally younger than the winter crowd and they catch on fast. If the available entertainment doesn't suit, they seek out their own fun. In Mexico, where summer travel is up 22% this year, tourists often forgo the resort delights of Acapulco (8,674 rooms) for a tour of the country's archaeological treasures or two weeks exploring a remote fishing village such as Puerto Vallarta (less than 1,000 rooms) on the West Coast. So popular is Puerto Vallarta now that the hotels are 90% full throughout the summer, and one part of town is popularly known as "Gringo Gulch."

* Average August temperatures: Mexico City 70DEG, Barbados 80DEG, Bermuda 80DEG, San Juan 81DEG, Virgin Islands and Kingston 82DEG, Nassau 82DEG.

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