Global business news twenty four hours a day at Bloomberg dot com, the Radio plus Mobile Act and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg Business Flash from Bloomberg World Headquarters. I'm Charlie pellet Hall. One month low for US stocks. This update brought to you by Carbonite. You never know when disaster will strike your business, from spilled coffee to malware attacks. Protect your digital files with secure automatic cloud back up from Carbonite. Visit carbonite at dot com today
to get two free months with the offer code. Broadcast stocks extended losses. The dollar climbed after the biggest gain in US retail sales in a year, reignited speculation the Fed mayliff rates as early as June. The SMP five hundred index down seventeen points today, dropping nine tenths of
one percent. Nav Stacktown nineteen, a decline there of point four percent down, Industrials down a hundred eighty five points, the drop of one percent, Gold up three fifty the ounce to twelve seventy four, a gain of three tenths of one percent. Crew down thirty seven cents of barrel forty thirty three, a drop of eight tenths of one
percent I'm Charlie Pelton. That's a bloom bird business flashy. Well, that seems appropriate to play as we are broadcasting live from Elbow Beach, Bermuda, ocean front enclave of classic style and contemporary luxury. And for all those who had to go through today's market action with the SMP five hundred down that a tens of a percent. Let's see if we can sheer people up a little bit. And we've
got just a person to do that. Bill Hanbury is the chief executive of the Bermuda Tourism Authority and he joins us now, thank you very much for being with us. Him good to be with you. Thanks. That has got to be a dream job. It's it's a great job to Bermuda is a great destination to be representing and a wonderful place to live. My wife and I are Americans who had the great opportunity to come here three years ago and we've enjoyed every single minute of it.
And we actually uh get a chance to walk on this beach on a regular basis, so we uh it's a life is good in Bermuda. I have to say it's my first visit to Bermuda and I'm I was really surprised. I mean, I just didn't realize how there's just something so beautiful about it and the people. There's just a culture. There's something about the spirit here that is very gracious, very welcoming that I didn't anticipate. It's a it's a first it's a first tier country with
the with some island soul and uh. It is truly one of the pre eminent destinations in the world. It was for many, many years. So back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, if you are looking for the premiere luxury destination, Bermuda was on that list. Kind of lost our focus a little bit through the eighties and nineties as international business um urged as a kind of a key part of the economy. And I'm sure you've probably heard that
from the premiere when you talk today. But the reality is tourism product is still spectacular, and we're now trying to balance international business with a more astute understanding of our tourism product. Tell us about what you're trying to accomplish. What would you like to see Bermuda look like, let's say in five to ten years. Well, we still wanted
him to be the same place it is today. Extraordinary sense of service and quality, first tire, safe, secure, a place where you can relax but also connect to an island vibe that is really kind of unique to Permuta. So we're going in that direction. Um. There will be significant new development in the next five years in Bermuda
with new hotel capacity, renovations at hotels. If you take a look at the just the energy that exists here at Elbow Beach today, UM, this this property is on the on the upswing in a big way, as is the Bermuda product. And so uh, we're trying to be more competitive and more adaptable to uh what is a very very competitive environment that we live in. But we think we've got the right product to to compete well.
And there's a lot of competition the the Caribbean, many island nations there these you know, the the um Minan coast of of Mexico, the Mind Review as they call it, right, all these have been coming up rapidly Bermuda. Now you're here. We had earlier talk also to um uh ed heard a bird's excuse me, who's the running able beach? Now he's been here just two or three years, so a lot of a lot of focus. Now government's spending more
money on this obviously. Yeah. So one of the things that happened in two thousand and eight two thousand nine is the rest of the arrest of the global economy created um Bermuda also had a big shock in international business, and I think there was a realization at that time that we needed the better balance the country's economy and
begin to refocus on tourism. And we've been passed by by the dubrod Nicks, the Dubai's, the Abu Dhabi's twenty years ago, those were not destinations that people were going to and um today, Uh, those are dynamic, energized destinations and we needed to get up and punch in the big leagues against So the country's expending more more financial resources. We've sought a higher level of professionalism within the tourism authority and within government to deal on this global scale,
and we're making very significant progress. Certainly, America's Cup was one of those defining moments where that was not lightly thought about. It was a premeditated, very thoughtful approach to go chase America's Cup because year next year in it goes to our nautical and marine legacy in a huge way. We don't have to fabricate it, we don't have to fake it. We're we're really one of the pre eminent sailing destinations in the world. And I think, uh, certainly
America's couple reinforced it. How about the air links to North America and other regions around the world to bring tourists. Yeah, it's a it's a great question and and it's uh, it's something that sometimes people don't realize where we are geographically. Wheels up, wheels down, ninety minutes from JFK, ninety minutes from Boston, uh, an hour and forty minutes from Philadelphia,
two hours from from Atlanta and Miami. So we are, uh, we're much more accessible in many respects, at least from the East coast in Canada than the Caribbean would be. And um, we just need to tell people that we need to get that message out. And you know, of all of our visitors are coming from the northeastern part of the United States, and the more we message into the Boston, the Philadelphia, that particularly the metro New York markets,
the better off we are. And and that capacity, that airline capacity is very very important to us to make sure that we have the lift necessary to to move those new visitors to Bermuda. Well, Bill Hambury, we thank you so very much for joining us, and of course you crisis management nonprofit CEO, you helped do so much in Washington. You see when you were there and you got your Master's of Public Administration from the Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard. That was a few years ago. Congratulations. All right, Well Blo Hambury, thank you. He's the CEO of the ber Munit Tourism Authority. We want to thank everybody who has been so wonderful to us while we've been broadcasting live from Elbow Beach, Bermuny, Bermuda. It's an ocean front enclave of classic style contemporary luxury. We want to thank our technical director Charlie Bohmer, our producers Sam Linga, Reggie Brazils in New York. I'm copying Hason with Pim
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