The dispute appears to be regarding the late payment of rent for three restaurant spaces at Port Lucaya Marketplace, the waterside shopping centre that has become the de facto hub of retail commerce and entertainment in Freeport.

The three restaurants, La Dolce Vita, EAST, and The Pub at Port Lucaya (in the space formerly occupied by ‘Pussers’), are operated by Mr Hayward (son of Sir Jack Hayward), who has asserted that he has been a tenant for 22 years and has paid out more than $3.5 million in rent during that time.

According to court documents and legal papers filed, and subsequently reviewed by this writer, the landlord charges that Mr Hayward has failed to pay rent for those locations for the past ten months, and is in arrears just shy of $230,000.

Last week, the staff of the these businesses arrived to commence work to discover the doors locked and a noticed posted to advise that the landlord had exercised its right to control access due to the overdue sum and that it could further repossess the goods to recover any losses or expenses.

As a result, at least 75 Grand Bahama residents are out of work; while Mr Hayward has promised to continue to pay the workers while the problem is addressed, at the very least the future employment of these workers—and the livelihood of their families—are in jeopardy.

On the surface, it seems that a landlord is rightfully taking action to recover fees owed by a tenant that has fallen behind in a major way, especially given the amounts involved. No landlord can sustain its operation if it must carry such heavy losses over a long period of time; it just doesn’t make good business sense to do so.

For Mr Hayward’s part, today’s economy makes it difficult to continue to pay salaries, insurance, rent and license fees, purchase goods and supplies, and attend to all the other expenses that go along with operating a restaurant business—or three. To do so in a way that ensures that workers are paid regularly and staff levels are kept steady while bearing the constant weight of such costs can be difficult, if not impossible, as business volume steadily wanes.

Mr Hayward contends that his rental fees have more than doubled in the last five years, and he has challenged these increases that he claims have been unjustified and unsustainable.

One of Mr Hayward’s primary objections to the lockout action is that he believes these steps are motivated by the running feud between the owners and management of Port Group Limited, which has involved Sir Jack Hayward, the St George Estate and chairman Hannes Babak. While the ownership dispute and disagreement over management rights remains outstanding, Rick Hayward seems to believe that last week’s clash over his rental debt is driven more by the Port Group Limited than Bourbon Street/Port Lucaya Marketplace.

Such a belief is based on the fact that Port Group Limited’s management issued a letter of demand for the rental payments to Hayward’s company back in Aril 2009—yet Port Group Limited is not the landlord to which Hayward owes the outstanding amounts.

This week, Hayward’s legal counsel stated that the demand from this “third party” was ignored as it was not involved in the matter, which then lead Port Group Limited to respond by locking the doors of the rented space.

Mr Hayward has acknowledged his debt and acquiesced to Bourbon Street’s right to seek relief through the courts to recovered the sums owed. What Mr Hayward has rejected is the involvement of Port Group Limited, as he believes that there are other unrelated motivations spurring such aggressive steps.

While the true motivations and intentions of all the parties would be nigh impossible to decipher, what is clear to most outsiders is that such discord and conflict is nothing more than a gaping wound. This is just another symptom of a cancer that has been slowly disintegrating the integrity and sustainability of Freeport and Grand Bahama.

While the entire Bahamas faces the facts of a globally faltering economy, the evaporation of discretionary spending, and the threats of increasing regional competition (helllloooo, Cuba), Grand Bahama struggles to find its own footing as the very investors, regulators and managers that are charged with its stewardship continue to bicker.

That is not to say that there aren’t real and important matters to be settled, but we have heard from all corners—licensees, gas station attendants and expatriate visitors alike—that it just needs to be done.

The parties should fully appreciate that the lingering dispute is negatively affecting the lives and collective future of the residents of Grand Bahama, and ultimately, the Bahamas. The personal agendas, egos and lack of effective communication are hampering potential investments and stagnating Grand Bahama.

Stop muddying the waters when there are fish to be caught. Stop playing the fiddle while our city burns. And stop holding our futures in limbo while we wonder where our next paycheck is coming from.

~ejr~

NOTE:
Late Thursday evening, July 2, 2009, a statement was issued by Port Group Limited stating that an agreement has been reached between the parties regarding the rental dispute. Click HERE to read that statement.

Most of the time there is no shortcut to success. Even so-called ‘overnight sensations’ usually have to work hard and long to get to the ‘sensation’ part; the ‘overnight’ could last years – decades even – until the critical mass has been reached.

We have been pleased to see a heightened interest in web-based content, even over the last six months since Christmas 2008. Subscribers to our weekly e-mail newsletters (Grand Bahama Info and Nassau Info) have increased dramatically, with more than 300 new subscribers added in just a few short months.

Even more significant has been the boom in the number of visitors that are drawn to BahamaIslandsInfo.com on a daily basis. We are always attentive to the many ways that people discover — or stumble upon —  BahamaIslandsInfo.com, because we want to be sure we are doing everything reasonably possible to get the word out about our web site.

We spend considerable time every day refining, improving and expanding BahamaIslandsInfo.com to make it more useful, more accessible and more accommodating to our web site visitors’ needs. We don’t just want you to visit our web site once, we want you to come back every day — several times a day! — to stay up to date with the news that affects you.

To help get the word out we focus on three main methods:
1. Make sure the content is relevant to those either living in the Bahamas or those that visit (planning to for the first time, planning to return, or those that live in the Bahamas seasonally);
2. Work hard at ensuring that the content is as current as possible; and
3. Pursue as many different external methods to spread the content and word around through other online resources.

Relevance is more than just seeing if the word “Bahamas” shows up in an article; any five-year-old that can spell “Google” can find thousands of articles and information about the Bahamas online. But sifting through the clutter to discover those that are the most salient and pertinent to people with a genuine interest in the Bahamas is the key.

Whether it is a shark attack or shark conservation, a serious crime or a new investment that will bring jobs and income to Bahamians, a government initiative that will impact our lives or a storm that will impact our homes, we strive to dig deep into the content that will be of greatest interest to our readers.

Some web sites will tell you that they focus on “the positive” side of life in the Bahamas; a valiant intention, to be sure. We wonder, though, how well informed their web site visitors will be after weeding through a clutter of flashing lights only to find half-baked feel-good anecdotes and press releases with little to no substance.

We respect our loyal web site visitors’ intelligence and maturity enough to believe that they are more than capable of enjoying informative and entertaining feature articles right along with the whole truth of the local, national and international news. We seek out reliable and legitimate sources for content, not the ill-informed or agenda-laden bloggers that try to pass off their bias as news and rumours as fact.

Sure, we get phone calls and e-mails telling us about something that seems incredible or newsworthy to some, but a few short questions later we can often determine that the source is questionable and the story is shaky; we take our responsibility to you seriously. We aren’t saying we haven’t (or won’t) make mistakes, but we work hard at trying to discern the truth and present it to you for your own consideration.

Our team and many of our frequent readers and contributors are constantly hunting down the information that we believe you want. And we listen to your feedback and pay close attention to the factual statistics on readership and clicks on articles. This tells us what people are seeking most. We use every tool available to us to watch out for trends and activity that we believe to be representative of our readers’ interests.

Ensuring that our content is current is just as important as making sure it is relevant. To be sure that current content gets to you as fast as possible, we post new articles every day of the week, even on public holidays and late into the night.

Every single week we repeatedly see articles that we have posted on BahamaIslandsInfo.com show up in newspapers and web sites days later. This is just further affirmation that we we not only are delivering you the right content, but we are getting it to you faster than most others on any given day.

We also use every available means to get the broadest possible visibility for our content; getting it in front of more people is a vital part of being a successful web-based service.

To accomplish this goal we have built relationships with other Bahamas-focused web sites that hold similar values of design excellence, content integrity and true relevance. One excellent example of such a relationship is BahamasLocal.com. This well designed and executed web site is a cross between a Bahamas search engine and a business directory; businesses can list their company information for free and there are options for enhanced listings for greater exposure. As BahamasLocal.com creator and co-owner Jason McDowall has often noted, the web site has given exposure to companies that otherwise might not get web visibility.

BahamaIslandsInfo.com delivers all the news content for BahamasLocal.com; not only does this enhance the content at BahamasLocal.com but it reveals the features and benefits of BahamaIslandsInfo.com to a wider audience.

There are several technology tools that we have embraced to help spread Bahamas news and information to a wider audience. Our Facebook page has touched a massive new segment of the online Bahamian community of over 50,000 people.  And our series of Facebook advertisements have been viewed more than 4.5 million times and drawn nearly 3,500 visitors to BahamaIslandsInfo.com.

Our news content is continuously picked up by Google News, with articles showing up in search results as little as four minutes after being posted to our site.

The content aggregator feature RSS (real simple syndication) is a way that many people keep in touch and up to date with the content across many web-based services. While some Bahamas-based web sites are just discovering this useful tool, BahamaIslandsInfo.com has been providing it since the day it was launched. (If you want to use our RSS feature just click the RSS icon near the top of the right-hand column of almost any page.)

Our most recent addiction…er, addition…to our technology tool arsenal has been Twitter. Still very much on the inclining slope of popularity, Twitter is an excellent way to get brief updates and info from friends and businesses online. On our Twitter feed (add us on Twitter @bahamasnews) you’ll get Bahamas news updates mere seconds after content has been added to BahamaIslandsInfo.com. When you spot a headline of interest you can easily click from the Twitter notification to jump straight to the full story. Hundreds of people follow us on Twitter and we have seen readerships stats jump by a factor of two or three for any article posted on our Twitter feed.

One of the great things we have seen over the last few months has been the substantial spike in other web sites around the world cross-linking to BahamaIslandsInfo.com stories that have particular regional, international and global interest. Web sites such as those operated by MSN, The Wall Street Journal (including a special section dedicated to President Barack Obama), and several Bahamas-focused travel web sites including About.com’s Caribbean Travel Blog, have all picked up articles from BahamaIslandsInfo.com that they believe their readers will find of interest.

These efforts have brought BahamaIslandsInfo.com to the place where it is now a significant contributing force in the Bahamas news and information sphere. Averaging between 1,000 and 1,500 visitors every day with traffic coming from dozens of countries and referring web sites, BahamaIslandsInfo.com has truly come into its own, just a year and a few months into its life. We thank you for helping to make that happen.

But all of these things, as effective and important as they are in operating a web-based service, are only truly effective if we know that our readers are satisfied and well-served by our efforts. We have always appreciated the encouragement, criticism and comments from you in the past and we welcome it in the future. Please write to us at info@bahamaislandsinfo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and share your thoughts and your ideas.

~ejr~

But, as we examined before, claims of ‘millions of hits’ to a web site are most often an exaggeration of the facts and a distortion of what web server statistics actually mean. Such claims can also reveal the ignorance — or the deceitfulness — of a self-proclaimed ‘web guru’ that has just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough experience to be trustworthy.

Besides spouting spurious stories about web site ‘hits’ (be sure to read our article discussing this in more detail) web site operators frequently boast about the incredible breadth of their web site traffic, claiming to be significantly ‘global’ and ‘international’; again this is more often than not designed to convince readers into thinking that that particular web site is more than just a hometown sensation but is instead some sort of worldwide phenomenon. They will often gloat about ‘millions’ of international web site ‘hits’ and minimise the number of Bahamas-based visitors, all in a deluded effort to inflate their own egos and mislead their readers.

Such claims are based on that web site operator’s misguided understanding of ‘country’ statistics that web servers generate.

Just as web site ‘hits’ are inherently inaccurate for determining a web site’s popularity, ‘country’ statistics are a sorely inaccurate basis upon which to boast. Country statistics are determined by two primary things: the top level domain (TLD — the portion of a web address after the ending ‘dot’, such as .com, .net, .bs, .ca, .co.uk, etc) of the requesting site and/or the reverse lookup of a person’s IP address. While this can be accurate it can be just as often inaccurate.

The reality is, any boasting of accomplishment based solely on web site statistics is a house built on the sand. It will soon crumble under closer scrutiny and honest evaluation.

When a web site visitor’s geographic location is determined using the TLD of the visitor (such as ‘.com’) then any sense of accuracy is immediately lost. How many people in the Bahamas use e-mail addresses ending in ‘.com’? Think: gmail.com, coralwave.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com. Then, compare that with how many people utilise e-mail accounts ending in ‘.bs’ (can you think of anyone?) and you begin to get the picture. Associating a geographic location with a TLD is vastly flawed.

According to one web consulting firm’s glossary of web stat terms:

A country is determined based on the top level domain of the requesting site. Reporting of visits by country is inaccurate because there is no strong correlation between many top level domains (such as .com) and particular countries.

But, in reality, few web server stats use this method alone, but rather use the reverse IP address lookup method, which helps to compare a web visitor’s origin with a database of IP address allocations. This can help more accurately identify the geographic location of a web visitor, even to such granularity as the city from which they are visiting. But even this information can be severely skewed.

Here is one reason why this is the case: Without getting too deep into the technical details, major corporations design their computer networks so that all internal users must pass through their own routers which perform address translation from internal addresses to public external addresses. This conversion can make it appear as if all of those individuals are coming from a single IP address. This can even be the case for thousands of users from around the world that are connected remotely to their company’s network using such technologies as VPN (virtual private network).

Ford Corporation, for example, has over 320,000 users worldwide — but these could be counted as a single visitor from a single location outside Chicago. It is easy to see how this fact alone can cause web traffic information to be misstated, and there are others.

The moral of this story, then, is to view all web performance statistics through the discerning lens of skepticism and generalities. Don’t base your boasting on such an inaccurate and still evolving technology. As another Internet consultant put it:

• Web analysis is statistics, not accounting. Absolute precision is impossible.
• This inaccuracy is OK so long as you don’t get too excited about the fine detail.
• If you design your processes accordingly, the exact numbers shouldn’t matter too much. You are where you are today. You want to improve on this. The key to success is to concentrate on trends over time, not individual numbers.
• We have to accept that web analytics software is in its infancy.
• Life’s full of uncertainties and web analytics is no different.  Somehow we all manage to get by.

We believe that web site operators in the Bahamas should spend more time creating unique, interesting and compelling content and less time manufacturing tales of success and plagiarising original content from other writers and web sites and passing it off as their own. This, far more than spinning fantastic fallacies of figures, will lead to actual success.

LEARN MORE:

• Click HERE to read more about understanding web statistics
• ‘How to sell statistics to clients’ – sitepoint.com (Interesting to see the opening line of this article — almost identical to our first article — and this was published more than a year after ours! -Ed.)
• ‘Web Stats – The Truth About Hits And Visitors’ – freshbusinessthinking.com

~ejr~

The event consisted of a wide range of products including housewares, jewelry, small electronics, various gadgets, and unique items, many of which are referred to as “as seen on TV” products.

The event was run by South American Vafiponce Trading Company with a local Bahamian company, Bahamian Supreme Trading Company, representing the plans locally. The events were advertised through newspaper ads, extended infomercials on local TV stations, street banners and live radio remote broadcasts.

As a licensed small business owner, employer and resident of the Bahamas, we reflected on such an event and wondered how this impacts our consumer market, retail outlets and other employers.

Certainly consumers were given opportunities to see and purchase items that may not be otherwise found locally, and the overall thrust of the promotions – particularly the TV-based ones – was that the prices were low, and good deals could be found.

But we wondered: was this group licensed for retail sales of these goods? And could this kind of thing actually hurt local businesses and even consumers?

We talked with two major local general retailers, who asked to remain anonymous, to get an insight into what impact this could have. One might expect that an established local retailer would not be too happy about someone infringing on their market, and this proved to be true. But there was a deeper message than simple defensiveness and protectionism.

One retailer who visited the trade show said it resembled a ‘traveling flea market’, but actually did not fault the organisers or the operators for doing such a thing. The retailer went on to say that they welcome fair competition, even from events such as this. But, they said, competition can only be fair when the same rules and requirements are placed on all of those in a particular area of business. Bahamians and foreigners must be held to the same standard and the same checks; Bahamians must not be disadvantaged.

They claimed to have done some checking and found that no license had been given by the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) for the Freeport event (all businesses operating in the city of Freeport are required to be licensed by the GBPA). The retailer also said that, if a foreign group is permitted to come into this market without paying license fees, work permits, insurances, and complete import duties on goods, then why should a Bahamian be forced to do so?

In an interview with local press, show organiser Pedro Roberts said that the products that were made available are manufactured in Venezuela, Columbia and Peru and do not compete with the local market because they are “one of a kind”.

“Most of these products that the show has cannot be found anywhere else so we do not clash with the local market but enhance it,” Roberts said.

We asked the local retailer that attended the event if this was in fact the case. They said that they observed pots, pans, garden hoses and common jewelry items for sale, and that all of the products they saw were in fact offered for sale by Bahamian companies.

Asked if the prices offered were significantly below local retail prices, one Bahamian retailer said they were told by a local consumer that a similar garden hose that sold at the trade show for $34 was available at a local shop for exactly half — $17. While there were likely savings to be had, you would have been wrong to assume that all deals were good deals.

We were told that there were several items on display that were purported to be a specific brand when in fact the actual product being sold was a no-name brand of apparent inferior quality. As an example, a prominent sign above one display showed the ‘Little Giant’ brand of ladder along with an image of Hal Wing, the personality that appears in the ‘Little Giant’ TV ads. The ladders actually available for sale were not the genuine article.

One Bahamian retailer told us that they received a phone call from one of their regular customers, irate that they (the retailer) would “allow” such an event to happen. The retailer explained that they had no control or influence over such a thing, but that the government and local licensing authorities are the ones that either permit or deny such things.

Bahamian law prohibits foreigners from the unlicensed direct cash sale of items to local consumers, however, from all available information this appears to be precisely what occurred.

In the days when families are struggling to make every dollar count, is such an event really a bad thing? Does it really matter?

We believe it does. In recent weeks, staff of local retailers have been laid off due to slowing business volume. Companies, just like individuals, are scraping for every income opportunity, trying to cut costs, and stay afloat. Consumers also need to be protected from faulty merchandise and must have the basic options for recourse when a product fails.

Traveling bands hawking goods one day and gone the next offer no warranty, no support and no remedy to problems or even questions that can arise. When a ladder fails a week after purchase from a transient salesman, where does one go for a refund or replacement? You’re plain out of luck. But if the same thing happens after that item has been purchased from a local retailer you better believe we’ll be back there looking for money back or a brand new substitute. And so we should.

We are all for a free market economy, but it just doesn’t make sense to allow fleeting traders to compete for our jobs, our incomes and even our safety. Foreigners that come to the Bahamas must adhere to our laws, meet their obligations and act fairly to our people.

If this is not the case, then local retailers should fire their staff, shut their doors, rent a warehouse, and sell from the back door whenever they need a little cash. Why go through all the bother of licensing, insurances, leasehold improvements, and the many other overhead costs when you can sidestep all that and just do as you please?

If we do not enforce our laws and be more mindful of how we may actually be hurting ourselves, then you can believe that harder times are in our future.

~ejr~