"Blackpool in the Sun"

By Michael Demarest

Brits take over Miami Beach, with manners and moolah

"The British are coming! The British are coming!" roared a rider in a hired Paul Revere costume, as he galloped up Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. Even as rent-a-Revere was spreading the tidings last April, the first Anglo invaders were pouring off a chartered jet at the Miami International Airport. There they were welcomed by a high school band playing Rule, Britannia, Mickey Mouse, Flipper the Dolphin, a bicycle-riding parrot and the mayor of Miami Beach. Hizzoner grabbed the first couple to clear customs and bestowed on them Moet et Chandon champagne, a limousine ride to the Nautilus Hotel and the keys to the city, which in recent years has been sadly depressed.

Wave upon wave, the British have been hitting Florida's beaches ever since. An estimated 200,000 vacationers from the United Kingdom will have visited Miami Beach on daily flights by year's end, adding some $100 million to the economy of that fabled strip. They are lured to the U.S. by reasonable hotel rates and charter packages and Freddie Laker's Skytrain jet service. Inflation back home and the pound sterling's strong exchange rate against the dollar make Miami a splendid buy. According to the U.S. Travel Service, 1.25 million British tourists will visit the U.S. this year, a 25% increase over 1979. It is the first time since World War II that their numbers will about equal those of Americans visiting the now hideously expensive U.K.*

Most of all, they want to vacation in Florida, whose mythic allure and down-to-sand prices make it a powerful competitor of the Spanish resorts that have long attracted the working-class English vacationer. But today there are few places in the world where a lad and his lass from Lancashire can get a better vacation bargain than in what some call in jest "Blackpool in the Sun," after the blue-collar British vacation spot of less affluent times. Two weeks at a Miami Beach hotel, round-trip air fare included, can cost as little as $470. One British tour firm, Intasun, alone has reserved 6,000 beds a night in 21 Florida hotels for this summer. "We love them, we love them," gushes Miami Beach Mayor Murray Meyerson.

Other Floridian hosts are also happy. Some hotels that normally close down for the summer now wave the Union Jack; the Saxony has converted its coffee shop to a teahouse where a full contingent of Brits can also have a $2.75 fish-and-chips lunch. Some visitors are developing a taste for bagels, but once kosher menus now feature bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes). The Miami News has added a "News from Britain" section and has slapped the British ensign on its vending machines. Dart boards are sprouting like bougainvillea. Rivers of Guinness and Watney's pour through the bars, which are turning into pubs, with additional barmen (and barmaids) to distribute the flood. On sweltering summer days, when the locals huddle around air conditioners, only mad dogs and Englishmen fill the streets and beaches.

All is not sweetness and light ale, though. In summertime, normally off-season Miami Beach closes down with the sun. Complains Lesley Lerner, 24, a London secretary: "Once you've had a drink and something to eat at night, it looks like everyone has gone to sleep." At a Miami Beach McDonald's, an employee hurled a hamburger across the room after an Englishwoman said that she wanted "a plain one" instead. For the most part, however, the visitors seem to extract joy from the beaches, pools, barbecues, country-music concerts and such attractions as Disney World and Cape Canaveral -- and, not least, the gargantuan helpings served in American restaurants. Sighed Mike Libra, a marketing manager from Buckingshamshire: "The one problem will be getting the airplane off the ground after all these big meals." The British may be giving quo pro quid. Their innate politeness, says Tourist Official Harold Gardner, is "rubbing off on our service people." In Florida, as they say in England, manners makyth men -- and moolah, too.

--By Michael Demarest

* In all, close to 22 million foreign visitors are expected to come to the U.S. this year.

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