Young entrepreneur launches website to advertise Caribbean businesses

With the intention of promoting and integrating local and regional travel and entertainment via one medium, young entrepreneur, Collin Dougan has developed a website that offers all those services.{{more}}

www.metrocaribbean.com is the name of the recently launched website and according to Dougan, the site will be used to advertise various categories of businesses in different Caribbean islands, and help to simplify and communicate information regarding local and regional entertainment.

The categories include: hotel and accommodation, restaurant, bars, and nightclubs, vehicle rental, taxi services and land and sea tours.

“Our aim is to be the largest, most comprehensive entertainment directory of its kind offering marketing and promotional services to Caribbean businesses. We will provide travel and entertainment information to the Caribbean Internet community worldwide, in our pursuit to become the most recognized source of travel and entertainment,” Dougan said in an interview on Wednesday.

Explaining how the idea of the website came about, Dougan who is an Accountant by profession, said in 2006, when he had just returned from Toronto he did alot of traveling throughout the Caribbean.

“I was looking for somewhere to go, because I was really bored here. So, I went Barbados for the weekend, because I know Barbados has a good entertainment scene. When I got there, I found out that Barrington Levy was in Grenada and had I known that I would have gone there instead.

“So, that is where the idea came from and that was since 2006, because I then realized that there was a need for something like a directory where persons can be informed about what to do, where to go and stuff like that,” Dougan said.

After realizing the need, Dougan said that in 2007, he decided to create the website but was unable to continue because of his main occupation.

“It was a soft launch for like a month, because it was getting too big in terms of clientele and I had my accountant practice that I had to deal with and I said, before this gets too big and out of control, let me continue my practice and later get back to the site.”

As the years passed by, Dougan said he did extensive research and development into the idea and after final discussions with a family member who resides in Bermuda and is an investor in the site; he decided to invest fully into Metro-Caribbean.

Intentions are to get as many as fifteen Caribbean countries on board and after launching the St. Vincent and the Grenadines leg on Monday, Dougan says he will busy traveling throughout the region over the next few months to complete the task at hand.

“My next stop is Grenada where I will spend six days in meetings with potential clients. Already, we have agents in the identified islands and it’s just for me to travel to them and confirm them coming on board.

“I think just now I might have give up my accounting practice fully because the vision I have for this, we have the potential of becoming something real big that will be beneficial to us locally as well as regionally,” Dougan said. (AA)