FOCUS is happy to welcome a new partner: We Are SXM. Encounter with its founder, Roy von Zutphen, who gives his all for the tourist promotion of the territory.
Roy van Zutphen developed his interest in the tourist field while he was in the Netherlands where he grew up and studied. With a bachelor’s degree in Management and sport tourism, he has had several professional experiences before taking off for Sint Maarten, in search of adventure. His few months spent as a waiter within the Holland Beach House Hotel made him want to come back to the Friendly Island to settle in 2012. During 3 years, Roy managed the beach bar of the hotel, before he got a strong urge to explore the island. “Customers were always asking me the same thing: what is there to do, to see?”, he remembers. “I decided to create a website for this high-end clientele, by listing everything that was done on the Dutch side as well as on the French side”.
This is how Roy launched his first website in 2015, www.wearesxm.com, alongside different jobs he was doing throughout the months. But his commission-based salary to showcase the island’s institutions was not enough. In 2017, he was hired as a commercial for another website platform, a tourist information website whose paper version came out a few months later. During 2 years, he learned a lot about digital marketing and referencing, however, while his employer’s financial promises were not kept, he decided to develop We Are SXM by developing the website and by launching his own travel guide. Two years after Hurricane Irma, “we had no online platform to show the world we were alive and that the travel destination was open”, Roy points out.
After a bunch of drafts and $5000 borrowed from a friend to cover his first fees, within two months, he managed to convince 38 prospects to follow him in his endeavor. Today, three years later, 90 companies trust him, his guide is printed in 50,000 copies per year and he has more than 20,000 followers on social networks. He also organizes guided tours to discover the nooks and crannies of the island through the prism of street art, history or even gastronomy. Accompanied only by a few writers and freelance web designers, Roy carries his project almost entirely alone, but doesn’t forget the support he has received, for which he says he is “extremely grateful. Many thanks to our customers for trusting us in being their voice on the tourist market”.
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