For 14 years I have contributed with people lile Ann Phelan, Allison Burnett, Mark Harrold, Si Parris and others on Antigua and Barbudas tourism message board or forum. In the old days it was called the newsgroup and the Ministry of Tourism website which was actually owned by a company called geographia (geographia/antigua-barbuda/). They operated our tourism website pre 2000 until a few years ago. David Fernandez who ran our Tourism office in NYC prior to 2004 worked with those guys because in the very early days (1996 - 1999) I suppose owning a website didnt appear to be that important. It was just another marketing tool being pushed on you. It was never owned by our country or tourism department and we just paid rent i suppose. Despite the site being very old and outdated technologically, it attracted huge web traffic and the forums attached to it always were very active and the regulars on there who were mostly made up of regular Antigua and Barbuda visitors helped push this country by helping answer questions posted by tourists. It was an exceptional marketing tool that helped the country and many of us involved in tourism. Back in 2007 it became apparent to several internet trolls and Antigua haters that our forum (message board or newsgroup) was unmoderated and they started really making a mess of things starting hateful or deceitful threads. It turned off many regulars and prospective visitors. A group of regulars got together and started antiguaforums , paid for it to be set up including its hosting and all other costs. (it has always been paid for independantly by me) We finally were able to show Minister Lovell the one they were currently using with all of the terrible posts made by internet trolls. The late Winston Derrick helped make that connection with Lovell after I showed him some of the Trolls posts. Lovell agreed to stop using the old one and to use the one we had just made. It was attached to the main tourism website as the official message board and very quickly it started being used actively. It became the place where even people on Tripadvisor reccomended to find good Antigua info from experts. If you look though the threads on antiguaforums you can see plenty of good info. All of this was being carefully monitered by Derede Whitlock in our NYC Tourism office and the forum was exceptionally administrated and moderated by people a small group of volunteers in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Antigua. It was a very very important site/resource with over 1200 registered members and tens of thousands of users not registered. The web traffic was significant. Despite all of this being known to the Ministry of Tourism, they decided to abandon it totally when they decided to move away from the Geographia guys and started their own site. Our new site, visitantiguabarbuda doesnt have an interactive forum anymore and despite me and many others writing emails to the former minister and to the guy who got the 500,000 pound sterling contract to build the site and its related features..... the forum was abandoned. It is still there and can still be searched for, but its not very active anymore as its not attached to the new site in any way. I see now that still many features on this new site are not working and despite being the only excursion operator that is fully and properly registered on the site, Adventure Antigua have yet to receive a booking after two years. (I now notice they took down the book now tab probably because it simply never worked.) I met with the former Minister and the Guy/company that got the nice contract and tried to explain some of the history and some of the major challenges they would face with operating a booking agency within the Antigua Barbuda owned and operated site. I explained to the Minister and the Contractor the history of other such sites like ShoreTrips and even the new IslandRoutes which has had incredible challenges even to this day with their online bookings. However, it was all ignored. I actually had to spend days and days finding faults on the site when it was launched and carefully explaining to the developer the issues. Even simple navigational issues on the site made some sections cut off an not accessible unless you had the url. For Example, you could not get to the activities section from the homepage in any way. They had left out any link to it even though the section was set up. What started out being you must be doing something wrong eventually turned into silence and then a fix when they would see what i was speaking about. IT was and still is a mess. The cute photos and nice colours dont keep people on the site and in fact many I have spoken with go back to google and settle on antiguanice where the info is easy to navigate through. Less flashy for sure but usable and practical. I mean, look at this page visitantiguabarbuda/caribbean-adventures/adventure-antigua and tell me if you see hard core quality. As mentioned I have spent most of the past 14 years monitoring Antiguas presence online and the tools that we all use to promote ourselves here. This new website is the worst value for money that I have seen during that time and I feel that it isnt helping. One of the main reasons that the site was developed was to have total ownership and control over our own online presence. I hear even that is on shaky ground at the moment. If there is someone out there whos close with the new minister of tourism and who understands how important a well managed forum can be please tell him to take a good look at the confusing new site and get it sorted! (rant over) Charles fernandez Samantha Marshall Melford Nicholas Robin Yearwood Snr and others. This needs fixing!
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 16:14:32 +0000
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