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Bermuda has a delicate economic problem attached to sensitive social facts.

It is damaging the island's tourism product. It is not immediately visible, nor is it easily stopped or undone.

It is Bermudian usage of hotels in Bermuda.

In North America or anywhere else, there are five-star - or as the Minister for Tourism sometimes calls them, seven-star - hotels.

They do not necessarily have diamond-encrusted physical plants and gold-plated fixtures.

Nor do they only serve champagne and caviar. But they do charge very high prices.

Their general ambience coupled with their high prices gives these places their five-star status.

The state of their buildings and furnishings is important - but is not the sole factor.

Their high price alone does not make them five or seven-star.

It is the combination of ambience and price that keeps certain layers of society - the likes of plebeian people like me - out of their establishments and thus creates a certain exclusivity by excluding people like me, and possibly you.

I cannot afford to stay at the Dorchester in London or the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. But I have stayed at the Michelangelo in Johannesburg.

Generally, I stay at more affordable places. That means as far under $200 per night as I can get while retaining reasonable comfort and convenience.

Other people are happy to always spend $500 or more for each night in a five-star place.

For that $500, the spender expects to be buying physical ambience - nice furnishings, excellent amenities and services and pleasant staff - as well as an air of exclusivity.

The two - ambience and exclusivity - are inseparable in any five-star or high-end luxury hotel.

People who pay these prices do not expect to fork out big dollars then find themselves rubbing shoulders, as guests, with people who are not 'the same' as them.

Put another way, a hotel guest paying $500 a night for his room will not expect to find youths from the local high school shacking up two doors away in the same establishment.

Snobbish

Nor would the high-paying guest expect to find any obviously lower-income people regularly using and sharing the facilities for which he is forking out $500 per day.

Snobbish? Oh, yes. Discriminatory? Absolutely. "Who do they think they are?" Better than you - even if only temporarily.

Big buck spenders want to feel superior. They are trying to buy exclusivity and status, the same as many Bermudians who 'sport' down south.

If the commercial exchange is to succeed, in return for his $500 a day, the hotel guest must receive that feeling of exclusivity, status and luxury. Like it or not, that is the real deal.

In open and wealthy Bermuda, all Bermudians have access to all hotels. Many - if not most - Bermudians at one time or another will use our small pool of hotels. We can afford to. We expect to.

But when a bunch of locals turn up at what you - as a $500 per day payer - think is an exclusive five-star luxury hotel, you may feel cheated.

You may feel that, in reality, this high-priced establishment is no better than a much cheaper roadside motel.

Does heavy local use of our three remaining large hotels help pull them down from five-star luxury status to a lower two and three-star level? I believe it does.

Places like the new Tucker's Point and The Reefs may need to have a subtly successful campaign and policy that actually discourages a certain amount of 'local' attendance and usage.

That means forsaking some local dollars. With things as tight as they are now, that would seem a stupid business practice.

Long term though, it may prove to be the best hotel policy.

Whoa! Before grabbing, running with and waving the 'race' flag, re-read all I have just written.

There is no mention of race. This is not a Bermuda racial matter. Instead, it is a universal social and commercial matter affecting every luxury hotel on every continent everywhere in the world - all the time.

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