Managers President of IdeaWeb and C.E.O of Dominicanrepublic.com Inc
Robert Mc Collum
General Manager of Dominicanrepublic.com Inc
Eng. Mildred Cuevas
IdeaWeb S.A
Calle Padre Emiliano Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
Tel: (809) 541 84 41
Fax: (809) 566 16 10
Email:robert@dominicanrepublic.com
mildred@dominicanrepublic.com
Website: www.dominicanrepublic.com
How did the idea of the DominicanRepublic.com site come about and which were the initial objectives?
DominicanRepublic.com was created by the vision of a group of Dominican, U.S., Canadian and British entrepreneurs and corporations whose objective was to promote governmental, historical, cultural, political, commercial and tourism sector interests of the Dominican Republic and its people, and to serve as a hub for the exchange of ideas between the Dominican community and people looking at our country, for business, travel, news, and other aspects. We intend to organize, under one single roof, all information and web pages available on the Internet that in any way contribute to the interests of the Dominican people.
DominicanRepublic.com offers special features of interest to the Dominican community living abroad, Dominican business people traveling, Dominican businesses wanting to export their products and services, foreign businesses seeking local representation, national and foreign investors wanting to do business in the Dominican Republic, and government agencies wanting to promote their interests.
Our travel section provides specific information to potential visitors and specialized services to frequent visitors. We constantly follow up on the actions of our Minister of Tourism, Dr. Rafael Subervi Bonilla, to ensure that our site reflects his views.
Some of our services are:
· free email (YourName@DominicanRepublic.com);
· Free automatic website creation and hosting for members of Affiliated Institutions and Associations (YourCompanyName.DominicanRepublic.Com or DominicanRepublic.com/YourIndustry);
· Free transmission of faxes to the Dominican Republic;
· Transmission of real-time audio and video originating from Dominican television and radio stations;
· Design, collocation and hosting of corporate websites;
· E-commerce;
· The Dominican Republic banner exchange (http://do.linswap.com), and more.
What collaboration exists between your organization and public and private institutions of the Dominican Republic?
We are a privately owned foreign investment capital corporation, promoting the Dominican Republic under contract with Ministry of Tourism. We are currently in the process of concluding negotiations for strategic alliances with mayor international airlines, hotel chains, tour operators and car rental companies. Ongoing negotiations also exist with local organizations, associations and chambers of commerce that will protect Dominican national interests within our portal.
Could you offer us any information on the site management structure; number of visitors, policy of collaboration, marketing and advertising policies of the site?
As far as management Structure is concerned, DominicanRepublic.com has its customer service, public relations, marketing and government relations' office in Santo Domingo with 16 employees, under the Management of IT Engineer Mildred Cuevas. Most of these employees dedicate their full time to communicating, servicing and answering questions sent by e-mail by foreign tourists and potential travelers. This same office is also the home of our sales department managed by Edward W. McCollum.
Our legal department and corporate headquarters are located in Providential, Turks & Caicos Islands, under the management of International Lawyers, Dr. William K. McCollum and Dr. Andrew Newlands.
Our Accounting/Payables and Receivables Department, headed by our Financial Vice-President Mr. Alvin Nadal, is also located in our Santo Domingo Office.
DominicanRepublic.com presently gets over 10 million hits and 3 million page views per month, generated by over 100,000 unique monthly visitors. This traffic comes exclusively because of our name, we have not registered with the search engines as of today December 24, 2002. Once we submit to the search engines, we expect our traffic to multiply by four.
| Currently we produce our own content with the exception of our directory that is produced by Banapages.net and our booking engines that are provided by Expedia and Travelocity. The international tourism campaign displayed on the site is provided by our Minister of Tourism, Dr. Rafael Subervi Bonilla.
All Dominican Republic incorporated organizations are listed and linked free of any charge.
Foreign Multinational Organizations must pay for click-through traffic at a rate of 0.15 U.S. cents per visitor transferred from our site to theirs.
Banners sell at 28.00 per CPM (1 CPM =1,000 impressions), or 0.15 per Click-through.
Co-branded sections sell at US$55.00 per CPM.
Inclusion of a link in our newsletter sells for 2-5 cents per subscriber, or 0.15 cents per click-through to advertisers site.
DominicanRepublicc.com is a general information site. In which areas are you planning to concentrate and which future new topics do you intend to introduce?
We are already emphasizing in travel and tourism and will now concentrate on information for foreign investors. In the year 2002, we will be producing the Dominican Republic search engine, Radardom.com, featuring all existing sites with Dominican content of any nature, all topics and in all languages.
Which are your future plans for DominicanRepublic.com?
Our immediate next steps in our 12-month business plan include the launching of the Dominican Republic name portals in all the languages to which DominicanRepublic.com Inc. has proprietary rights of said country name (i.e.: French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, etc.).
In which other projects has IdeaWeb, S.A. participated or will participate in the future?
IdeaWeb, S.A. is the Dominican Republic Corporation, subsidiary of DominicanRepublic.com that serves the Dominican market, providing Web-design, collocation and hosting, Internet broadcasting of Dominican radio and television stations and Internet telephony.
How would you analyze the development of the Internet and New Information Technologies during the last few years in the Dominican Republic?
Outstanding if we compare with other Latin American countries. Our telecommunications industry, internet and telephony services available have developed at incredible speed through fierce competition and deregulation in a market with players such as GTE, Verizon, Motorola, France Telecom, Centennial, Orange, Codetel, etc.
What reforms or institutional support does this sector need to place the Dominican Republic at the forefront of new technology implementation?
I think that we have already achieved this position. The Dominican Republic has the most advance telecommunications available in Latin America and the Caribbean. No other nation in this region comes even close. All the industry needs is continued deregulation and non-involvement buy the government allowing the market to grow freely through competition.
To conclude and since your site offers information for investors, how would you describe the foreign investment climate of the Dominican Republic?
The country's main sources of hard currency income during the last 10 years have been: 1. Tourism; 2. Exports by Industrial tax free zones; 3. Capital through Direct Foreign Investment. These three all need peace, political stability and a favorable investment climate.
We have become a mature democracy with free elections every 4 years during the last 35 years. We must be the only Latin American and Caribbean country completely up to date in all of its international obligations. Our credit classifications have being recently upgraded, to the point that the Government was able to issue US$500 million in Sovereign Bonds last September, precisely after the September 11 attacks, under such favorable terms that it would have been ridiculous not to issue said bonds, if we compare said terms of issuance to what other Latin American and Caribbean economies have been doing. Our current president Hipolito Mejia and former President Leonel Fernandez have both really done an excellent job of reaffirming the country's international credibility and creditworthiness, credibility that had been affected by poor decisions of other regimes in the 80's and early 90's.
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