On Tue, 30 Apr 2002 19:27:34 -0500, Don Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Reef Fish wrote:
>>The MAIN thing I noticed is that the entire tourist trade is way down.
>
>That's interesting.  Any theories on this?  Perhaps seasonal?

Seasonally speaking, May is generally slow on diving.

Discounting that, one can see the effect of the US and global economy
hurt by the 9/11 fiasco.

Albert said his PRIMA business is 30% down, and is barely breaking even.
PRIMA looked crowded compared to other restaurants here, and the items
on his menu are much higher priced than comparable items else.  That
should give you a relative gauge of the restaurant business.

The airlines are raising prices to try to recoup the hundreds of millions
of $ they lost each quarter since 9/11.  That may BACKFIRE, as in the
empty seats on the CO flight we took to get here.


I noted in
>the paper last week that AA is recalling a couple thousand furloughed
workers.

They lost 325 million in the 1st quarter in which I flew on AA more
than I{ve flown on it the past 10 years.  Now that I am an AA Platinum
member, I can't find much attrative about AA even as a Plat member. Time
will tell whether recalling workers will put them further in the red or
closer to black.  It's a long way to recovery, as are most other airlines,
mostly because PEOPLE are unemployed, broke, or simply don,t have as
much dough for discretionary travel.
>
>Cozumel's loss is your gain.  No crowds is nice.

Not really.  You can always avoid the crowds.  BTW, there were six cruise
ships docked on our way back from the dives today.  (The high on Wednesday
has been as much as 13 during high cruiseship season).

Took lots of pix of seahorses today.

-- Bob.