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RESTAURANTS REPORT BUSY SUMMER SEASON

Aug. 13, 2001 – It's not unanimous, but many in the local tourism industry are sporting sunny summer smiles, reporting one of the better off-seasons in recent years.
The biggest winners may be the restaurateurs.
"This has probably been our best summer ever" in five years of doing business for the Herve restaurant on Government Hill, St. Thomas, according to Paulette Chassin, who owns the establishment with her husband, its namesake.
She said they get a lot of business from Marriott Frenchman's Reef, and "the Reef's full." Between hotel guests and locals, there's plenty of trade to keep Herve open six nights a week this summer, she said.
For lunch business, Chassin depends largely on ship passengers, so the restaurant is closed during the day on Fridays and Saturdays for the summer, since no ships are in port then. "Without the ships at lunch time, it's not worth it" to stay open, she said.
Cruise ship passengers don't generally travel to Frenchtown, where Alex Treml of Alexander's Café does a lunch business that is "about 98 percent local," but he is seeing more traffic for dinner than he did last summer.
On St. Croix, longtime restaurateur Frank Duggin thinks he sees the beginning of a turnaround. "For my business at Duggin's Reef, it has been the best summer since Hurricane Hugo," in 1989, he said. "Last summer was decent, and this has been a little bit better. It seems to be on its way back."
Friday night he served 65 people "and I think I knew 15 of them," he said. The rest were visitors.
"I attribute a lot of it to the Divi Hotel and Casino, which is eight minutes from my door," Duggin said. He acknowledged that not everyone is having a banner summer, but believes the good times are well spread around St. Croix's East End. "It's been a nice surprise," he said.
On St. Thomas, the story is cruise ship traffic and hotel bargains.
Mike Daswani of Royal Caribbean on Main Street said this summer has been "fairly better than the past few ones," but he misses the ships on Fridays and Saturdays.
On no-ship days, hotel guests come into town, but they don't take up the slack in business. Daswani said that's because the tourists filling up the bigger hotels in the summer season have been lured here by bargain rates, and "these are not the big spenders."
But, he said, "they have to eat" — so restaurants seem to be doing well.
For Vashi Dadlani of Little Europe, the picture is less bright. He believes his sales are down from last summer, but he said there is one saving grace this season: Once a week, his stores are filled with teen-agers from Mexico, and they are big spenders.
"They come with lists from their parents or their uncles" and leave with high-end clothing, designer goods, perfumes and brand-name watches, he said.
For hotelier Richard Doumeng, the summer is a mixed bag at Bolongo Bay Beach Resort. "The bars and restaurants are doing great," he said. "We get a lot of support from other hotels, and a lot of local support."
But his occupancy is not so great and, worse still, the rates he is charging are too low. Forced to compete with the larger resorts that can afford to sustain reduced rates, Doumeng said, he isn't charging enough to cover expenses over the long haul.
He repeated a warning he has sounded before: "Don't just look at the head count. Look at what the heads are paying."
This summer his published room rate is $165 a day. "That's $10 a day less than when I moved back here in 1989" to get involved in the family business, he noted. And many guests check in under one package deal or another that brings the price well below the published rate.
Yet, while the rates are down, costs are up. For instance, Doumeng said, he paid $30,000 for property insurance for the hotel in 1989; the quote for 2001 is $190,000.
Several of those in the tourism private sector had suggestions for improving tourism.
Doumeng criticized the practice of shops and restaurants closing when there are no ships in port. "It diminishes the hotel guests' experience," he said. "They can't even go to the pharmacy" on some days. He and Chassin both said the government needs to spend more on advertising.
Daswani said the government should make more of an effort to get cruise ships to call at St. Thomas on Fridays and Saturdays. Having at least one ship in port "puts a life into the town," he said. "You want to see crowds and activity. That builds up the momentum."
No-cruise-ship days in the summer could become a thing of the past on alternate weeks as early as next year under an agreement between the V.I. government and the Florida Caribbean Cruise Lines association and its members. The agreement has been signed by Tourism and Port Authority executives and is now out for approval by the cruise line parties.

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