VIEUX FORT, St. Lucia — Hopes are fading for a quick rebound from the tourism slump that hit Caribbean resorts after the Sept. 11 attacks, and instead it is spreading to everything from manufacturing to offshore banking.

        The advertising blitzes and discounts designed to lure wary travelers back into airliners and down to Caribbean beaches have failed to fill up hotels as the region enters the peak winter season.

        In St. Lucia, for example, beaches were virtually empty and hotels only half-full just a week or two before the holidays.

        For workers like Stevenson Sevrin, a resort chef, the situation has dashed hopes he might be back at work anytime soon.

        After the attacks, Mr. Sevrin was told that St. Lucia's 256-room Club Med, where has prepared meals for 17 years, wouldn't reopen as usual in December because of plummeting reservations.

        Among at least 100 people now out of work in the small coastal town of Vieux Fort, he is guaranteed 60 percent of his pay through November 2002, or about $150 dollars a week. It is barely enough to support his five children.

        He awaits word that tourists are coming back to the Club Med but says: “I don't have any confidence that it will open, and then what happens?”

        The Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and the deepening recession devastated the Caribbean tourism industry, which is largely dependant on visitors from the United States.

        Shock waves from the terrorist attacks transformed what was an already slow year for tourism to the region into what may become the Caribbean's worst economic downturn in 20 years, affecting many types of business.

        “There's no question that there's been an almost seismic ripple effect,” said Stephen E. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

        In the weeks after the attacks, the Caribbean saw decreases of up to 50 percent in arrivals compared to the same time last year. The islands already were having trouble competing with cheaper destinations like Mexico, and more accessible ones like Florida.

        Officials scrambled to offer promotions and discounts. While cruise ship business is returning to normal, hotel occupancy rates are still abysmal.

        Business leaders now can only hope the industry rebounds next year, as Americans search for destinations closer to home. However, despite heavy discounts, Jamaica's hotel occupancy in mid-December was 45 percent, about half of normal levels.

        Islands in the 14-member Ca ribbean Community, which includes Jamaica and St. Lucia, plan a $16 million campaign on U.S. and European television promoting the Caribbean as a safe haven. However, a lack of funding has delayed the campaign until February — too late to save this season.

        The Caribbean is facing its most serious economic challenge since the oil shortage crisis of the late 1970s, said Anthony T. Bryan, who directs the North-South Center at the University of Miami.

        The attacks slashed profit margins of Caribbean exporters, manufacturers and shipping companies faced with lower demand from U.S. markets and higher security costs.

        Wire transfer companies have reported declines in the amount U.S.-based immigrants are sending home in remittances to relatives in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

        The Caribbean offshore banking industry already was under pressure to guard against money laundering and threatened with international sanctions.

        Mr. Bryan said that with U.S. officials pledging to eliminate conduits for terrorist money, it's likely there will be more scrutiny and less offshore business, important in the Bahamas, the Caymans and eastern islands.

        Oil-rich Trinidad excepted, most Caribbean economies will have negligible growth this year. Jamaica will likely have zero growth. The Dominican Republic will grow 3 percent, but that's after years growing at 8 percent.

        Barbados is expected to slip into recession after eight years of growth.

        Tourism is the worst-hit sector. No world region is more dependent on tourism, and half of arrivals come from the United States.

        St. Lucia's hotels in mid-December were averaging 40 percent occupancy. That meant fewer earnings for souvenir vendors and taxi drivers, tour guides and bartenders. An estimated one in four people in the Caribbean depend on tourism-related work.

        For those laid off, there is little place to turn. Unemployment in St. Lucia — with a fading banana industry — is above 15 percent.

        Cornelius Janlouis, 32, lost his job as a water sports instructor at one hotel in St. Lucia as tourism slowed in July. He turned to farming vegetables.

        “We can't have tourism be our whole economy,” he said. “We need something else.”

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