The Dark Ages

Having had the opportunity to live abroad, it's quite contrasting how our local businesses approach the whole issue of promoting their businesses online. Large and small, our local businesses don't seem to value the benefits that could accrue from having that online presence.

With the advance of mobile and computing technology, the advent of the smart phones, the whole world is at one's fingertips; the access to information only as slow as one's data connection. This is indeed the digital age, consumers are spending more time online, and so it befuddles me why our Jamaican business don't see being online as being vital in doing business.

With so many Jamaicans in the diaspora one would imagine that our businessmen and women would see the value of going digital in promoting their businesses. Quite frankly, with increasingly busy schedules, no one has time to sit to look through phone directories, to look businesses up and then to sit and call around when one could with the click of a mouse, or scroll of a trackball find other companies who actually make the effort to court their customers.   

Certainly, when in need of a product or service, I like most customers take to the Internet, to get the undiluted truth, free of the well rehearsed spiel (i dunno why but i think it really ought to be spelt schpiel, but that apparently means something else in Yiddish) of the customer service agent, or reassuring soothings of that persuasive business owner. We do our comparisons, check prices and the variation of said prices and get reviews, all on the said big bad Internet. In this day and age when any buffoon can start a Facebook page expounding on the virtues of picking one's toe nails and asking all and sundry to like said activity, all for FREE, it does not take much effort and investment to get that online presence.

We really need to step it up if we are to compete in a global marketplace

What a Mess, The Second Coming of The Spanish

Are we that poor?

We definitely need to look at the way we invite foreigners to invest on our island, and the inducements that we set ou before them to them to do so. The Spanish have definitely not had a very easy go at it.

Over the past few days it has been reported in the media, the failure of RIU, the Spanish hotel company developing that big pile over on Mahoe Bay in Montego Bay to comply with the building permit that was issued to them.

Let us not even begin to look at the hint of corruption that is beginning to emanate from this whole issue; or even the poor architectural choices that the Spanish developers seem to take when building their odes to bad taste, but this whole issue needs some clarification.

Common sense however dictates that planes don't fly into buildings and so buildings built into the direct flight path of the airport can only be so high and no more. The planning done within these areas are done within strict guides with adherence not an option to those entities building within these areas. In fact development, whereever done, should take place within the guidelines set out by the local planning authorities and not be pushed aside as a matter of economics.

With the situation that is now taking place at Mammee Bay, where the residents in the area, and more so the users of the beach club complaining about the apparent pollution of the Mammee Bay Beach area by the RIU hotel there, and the numerous other instances during the construction and subsequent operations of these hotels this second invasion has ruffled many many local feathers. And as the Spanish become more entrenched within the local business commmunity and particularly at the western end of the island; quietly replacing more and more long established local entities, we need to find that harmonious balance where the Spanish and their way of doing things can coexist with the way we do things (as backward as we may be at times).

Hopefully this whole issue and others that have risen and remain unresolved, and those that are yet to come to light can be resolved as amicably as possible.

One things for sure, the Spanish guys really need to step up the PR, because the antagonistic or brusque approach seems not to be working well with us.

Weblink:

www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/135132_RIU-Hotel-defiant