LOCALS AND VISITORS now have another avenue through which to explore Barbados and the rest of the region.
With the click of a mouse, residents, tourists and prospective visitors to the Caribbean are able to find places of interest and learn more about the population in each island as well as interesting facts.
This has been made possible by creating a website – www.coucoucandflyingfish.com
It was created by Fun and Sun Publishing Inc. and is owned by 72-year-old businessman Robert Pitcher.
Pitcher told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that while the island was already being promoted through several avenues, none does it quite like his website.
“There is no other means or website in Barbados or any part of the world that promotes the island like coucouandflyingfish.com
“You [can] go there and see where you can get things to buy and places to go. We want you to be able to find a cafeteria if you want. It appeals to everybody,” said Pitcher.
A visitor to the website is greeted with a map of the country. By clicking on a parish on that map, visitors are given facts about that parish including its size and estimated population, the number, names and addresses of schools, churches and shops in that parish.
The site, which offers local, regional and international recipes, also provides a calendar of social events for the year.
“This website covers everything under the sun that is happening in this country. This site is 100 per cent Bajan,” boasted Pitcher.
“Coucou took us a few years to create. It took us some time to study the type of format that the public would be able to use and be comfortable to use. It took about seven years,” he added.
So far, this entrepreneur has also created a website for the British Virgin Islands, www.natureslittlesecret.com – St Kitts and Nevis, www.sugarcity.com – and www.ducanaandsaltfish.com for Antigua and Barbuda.
Guideline
“Coucouandflyingfish.com is the guideline for the other websites. Our marketing will be done in three ways; through radio and newspaper, bumper stickers and, of course, our own vehicles with a public announcement system perusing every nook and cranny in Barbados [and] broadcasting that you should visit the site,” he explained.
Coucouandflyingfish.com currently provides jobs for six people and according to Pitcher, three more will be employed soon.
“We have broken down the island into three areas so we are looking for three executives to work those areas. Each executive will feed us the information about the parishes; if one place is closed or if there is a new one in a particular parish. So everything will stay current,” Pitcher said as he walked me through the informative website.
“All websites are costly to maintain if you are going to keep it current. Right now, coucouandflyingfish.com is a template of what we are doing throughout the Caribbean.”
He said the website was also a great avenue for young businesspeople to promote their businesses on the regional and international market.
“Of course with tourists coming here and visiting, the entertainment sections will . . . help the country create revenue and not just revenue, but lots of foreign exchange,” he said.
But that’s not all: this long-time businessman said he was already looking at ways to make the website available in a mobile format.
“As we have the staff in place selling the advertising, we will be making it much more accessible. We want everyone to be able to go to their phone and pull up the website.
Instead of having to get a phone book that you can’t find easily, you could be in your car, pull up the website on your mobile device, find what you want and make a call right away,” he said.
He said the website is updated daily and information is added over time.
“I am of the opinion that a website never stops building. The colours, layout and information have to be changing all the time.”
