In Quiet Key West They Sing, Yes, We Have No Flotillas : Tourism: On a holiday weekend, hotel rooms are vacant and charter boats bob at the docks. Travelers apparently fear Cuban rafters are washing ashore.

On what is traditionally one of the busiest weekends of the year in the Florida Keys, hotel vacancy signs are lit, some charter boat captains are idling at the dock and luxury cruise ships are preparing for the unscheduled stops they may be making at sea to pick up non-paying passengers.

As the ragtag fleet of rafts continues streaming across the Florida Straits, the Cuban refugee exodus is raising economic havoc with Labor Day holiday tourism here. “Travel agents from Minneapolis have called to ask if the streets are safe. Even people in Miami have phoned to ask about health concerns,” said Andy Newman, a spokesman for the Monroe County Tourist Development Council. “We haven’t seen anything like this since after Hurricane Andrew.”

In fact, almost no Cuban refugees have landed in the Keys since Aug. 20, when the Clinton Administration ordered the Coast Guard to interdict the rafters at sea and shuttle them to a detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. More than 20,000 Cubans are now being held there in a massive tent city.

And although the dangerous migration of those fleeing economic hard times in Cuba continues, the trend is down. By Sunday evening, 1,069 Cuban rafters had been picked up between Cuba and the Keys since midnight Saturday. Last week, rescues were running at an average of 2,500 a day.

Despite the declining number of rafters, and the talks in New York between U.S. and Cuban officials trying to solve the crisis, the damage to the image of the Florida Keys--where a third of the 65,000 residents make a living from tourism--has been done. “What are people supposed to think when they see national news reporters on television doing their stand-ups from here, talking about the flood of refugees?” Newman asked.

A sample of advance bookings for the 8,500 hotel rooms in the Keys showed business down by 15% to 35% of normal, Newman said. “We were seriously hurting,” he said. “. . . Traditionally we sell out for Labor Day weekend, the last official summer holiday.”

Last weekend, the tourism council spent $28,000 on advertisements in six Florida newspapers and a computer message to 75,000 travel agents. The newspaper ad showed the famous picture of President Harry S. Truman holding up the erroneous headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” and went on to point out that reports of the Keys being awash with refugees were equally incorrect.

But although the advertising campaign may help boost the fall tourist season, only a few thousand walk-ins will save this three-day weekend.

In Key West, the Marriott Casa Marina, with more than 300 rooms, was only 87% booked by late Saturday. In Islamorada, Days Inn front desk clerk Pat Hajzer said 30% of the rooms were vacant at noon Sunday.

“People call and ask, ‘What’s happening down there?’ ” said Faye M. Bailey, assistant general manager of Marina del Mar resort in Key Largo. “The general perception is that we have rafts floating up on beaches and immigrants running through our streets. The misperceptions are incredible.”

Compounding the image problem, Bailey added, reports last week about a tropical wave of low pressure moving through the Florida Straits were misinterpreted by many potential visitors to mean hurricane. “We had a few thunderstorms,” Bailey said. “That’s normal.”

During the first few weeks of August, before the beefed-up armada of U.S. military ships began to intercept most Florida-bound rafters, some Cubans refugees did make it to shore. And those who only came close were often met by U.S. fishing boats.

Hank Powell, captain of the Chief, said he recently rescued five raft-loads of Cubans in one day. “The Coast Guard planes would circle us three times, and we’d have to follow them to a raft,” he said. Powell said he would secure the raft alongside the Chief, offer the Cubans water and food and then stand by for two hours or more until a Coast Guard vessel arrived.

He said his clients, paying up to $600 for a full day’s charter, were usually understanding. But the interruptions were not good for business. “I’ve had two cancellations this week,” he said.

Because of the increased Coast Guard presence, Powell said he is more likely to encounter empty rafts from which the refugees have already been rescued. And ironically, he said, those empty rafts improve fishing.

“The dolphin and wahoo stay under them in the shade,” he said. “So we go right for them.”

Although the Coast Guard attempts to burn or sink rafts after saving their occupants, so many makeshift vessels survive as flotsam in the Florida Straits and the Gulf Stream that they have become a hazard to navigation.

A national boat owners association, BOAT/US, last week issued a warning to members to watch out for the rafts, some of which are made of 55-gallon steel drums. In Dade County, a debris removal firm has been hired to salvage the rafts, which are washing up along southern Florida beaches and various uninhabited islands.

The captains of cruise ships, especially those that ply the Miami-Key West-Cozumel, Mexico, route, have also been alerted to rafts, both occupied and abandoned. By law, any U.S. boater must render assistance to people in distress at sea. That means that some Cuban rafters take a cruise to Mexico before being handed over to the Coast Guard.