It's a balmy 82-degrees Fahrenheit inside, the scent of coconut is in the air, and the palm trees are, well, they're painted on the wall.

So Wareham's not quite a tropical island.  But for 20 years, Gina West has made her customers at Tropical Tan tanning salon look and feel like they just came back from the beach.

"I never wanted to get into it, to be honest," West said.  She and her husband were managing the building when the business came up for sale.  Her husband encouraged her to take a gamble.

"I said, 'a tanning salon? What the heck do I want a tanning salon for?'" West said, laughing.  "I'm glad I did it though."

The business offers five rooms, four of which contain tanning beds and one which is a "stand-up" room.  Sessions last from 5 to 20 minutes, depending on the customer's skin type and the frequency with which they visit.  She says that in spring, her busiest time, she averages about 75 people per day.

"People are going away on vacation, so they want a base tan so that they don't have to worry about burning," West said. "If you only have a week on vacation and didn't prepare for it, you spend all your time in the shade."

Plus, rising temperatures at home mean clothes that can reveal some rather pale and pasty skin. And even though we have plenty of beaches around Wareham, many of her clients don't necessarily have the time to visit them regularly enough to develop their tan.

But the tanning business has changed in twenty years, West said.  Some trends have been positive for her business.

"I love it that guys come in," she said, noting that about 40 percent of her clientele are male when it used to be almost exclusively female.

Increasing numbers of people also visit for more than the cosmetic benefits of tanning.

"It's serenity lying in there." said Renee Serrano after her 12-minute session in the VHR (very high resolution) tanning bed, the only 12 minutes of peace she joked that she gets in a busy day.  "I'm always in a rush when I come here," she joked.  "That's why I get to get the 12-minute bed."

West said that other patrons call it their "20-minute nap," and that several patrons say it improves their mood during the gray winter months.

Other changes in the tanning business have not been so great.

"We've been being bashed lately" on the health impacts, admitted Gina.  "Moderation is the key with everything" she said, whether it's red meat, alcohol or tanning. "It's the people who abuse it - who go from tanning salon to tanning salon - who give it a bad name.  I've never come across anyone like that here, but I've heard about it."

The economy has hurt things as well, especially the cost of utilities.

"It's killing me," she said of her approximately $1,000 per month electricity bill.  She used to be open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. when she was the only tanning salon in the area and said, "I don't remember it being that high."

But the constantly humming tanning beds keep the room warm.  If only she had real palm trees.