New Website launched for
Everything St. Maarten
PHILIPSBURG--US-based JMB Communications has rolled out two entirely new Websites regarding “everything” St. Maarten/St. Martin. Completely redesigned, revised, and updated, the sites are successors to Jeff Berger’s former SXM Website, which it launched in 1995 when the Web first became widely used.
The new Websites
www.everythingstmaarten.com and
www.everythingstmartin.com contain more than 80 pages of island information divided into three main tourist-oriented sections: Before You Go, When You First Arrive and While You’re Here.
The sites also have widely-used weather sections that received nearly 75,000 hits this summer alone, during a calm hurricane season.
Everythingstmaarten.com is expected to top 1.6-million hits this week.
The site’s “Before You Go” section gives visitors all the information they need to plan a trip, including a hotel/villa reservations centre, car rental information, instructions on getting a passport, and copious other essential information.
“When You First Arrive” provides information regarding arrivals at the new Princess Juliana International Airport terminal or Dr. A.C. Wathey Cruise and Cargo Facilities.
“While You’re Here,” by far the largest section, covers everything else: shopping, beaches, restaurants, the zoo, golf and much more.
The site also offers two free newsletters. The first and oldest is St. Maarten & St. Martin Weekly News, an e-newsletter published for more than 10 years that is read by nearly 100,000 people worldwide, most of them in the USA and Canada. It offers news about travelling to the island, accommodations, and general island-related news of particular interest to tourists.
The second newsletter, which started in mid-2006, covers news in the timeshare industry and is actively campaigning for timeshare owner consumer protection legislation on the Dutch side.
“Tourists want to know what’s happening on ‘their’ island,” commented site owner and writer Jeff Berger. “They want information on restaurants, beaches, development, traffic, crime – everything: The good, the bad and the ugly.”
Receiving upwards of 10,000 hits every week in high season, and having thousands of “members” who receive special airfare deals and other benefits, the sites have a huge corps of readers on the island every week, year-round, “acting as reporters and feeding us information we can pass on to others,” Berger said.
“We also have friends all over the island who keep us informed, and we watch wire services to see what other news affects St. Maarten, such as cruise- and airline-related information. We offer a complete St. Maarten information centre oriented toward the specific needs of tourists.”
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