Hurricane season: keeping your website and business online
In the Caribbean, a website is part of your emergency communications. Between June and November it may be the only channel that still works when phones are down, staff are dispersed and customers overseas are trying to find out whether you are open, whether their booking stands and whether your people are safe. Preparing it takes a day; improvising during a storm does not work.
By Phoenix Caribbean··6 min read
Key takeaway
Hurricane-season website readiness means off-island hosting and backups, a pre-written status banner, current emergency contacts, tested restore procedures and a documented list of who can publish updates.
Your website is infrastructure, not marketing
During and after a major storm, local power and telecoms fail before the internet as a whole does. Customers, suppliers, insurers and worried families overseas all converge on the same place: your website and your social profiles. If the site is hosted on-island, or depends on someone in the office to update it, it goes quiet at the exact moment it matters most.
Guests with bookings need to know whether to travel. Clients need to know whether deadlines hold. Staff need to know where to report. All three are answerable from one page if it was prepared in advance.
The pre-season checklist
Work through this in May, before the season starts, and again after any significant site change.
- Host off-island on a distributed or edge platform so local infrastructure damage does not take the site down.
- Keep automated backups off-island, and restore one to a test address to prove it works.
- Confirm domain and DNS control: know the registrar login, keep contact details current, and enable auto-renew so nothing lapses mid-season.
- Prepare a status banner component that can be switched on in minutes with pre-written wording for watch, warning, closure and reopening.
- Document who is authorised to publish updates, with at least two people in different locations who have tested access.
- Check that phone numbers, email addresses and an alternative overseas contact are correct on every page.
- Enable a simple offline or low-bandwidth fallback so the key page loads on a weak connection.
- Export critical data — bookings, client contacts, invoices — to a copy held outside the territory.
Communicating during an event
Short, dated, factual updates outperform reassurance. Say what is known, what is not known and when the next update will come. Publish to the website first and syndicate to social channels, so there is a single authoritative source rather than conflicting comment threads.
Keep the update at the top of the homepage rather than on a separate news page nobody will find, and keep the rest of the site intact so the enquiry route still works for customers thinking about next season.
Afterwards
Recovery communication is a commercial opportunity as well as an obligation. Publishing a clear reopening date, current conditions and honest photographs restores confidence far faster than silence, and the pages tend to attract strong search and AI-answer visibility because they answer exactly what people are asking.
Then run a short review: what failed, who could not access what, which contact list was out of date. Fix those items while the experience is fresh, and fold the checklist into your annual website management cycle.
Last updated by the Phoenix Caribbean team, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands.
Frequently asked questions.
Should Caribbean businesses host their websites off-island?
In almost all cases yes. Off-island or edge-distributed hosting means the site stays online when local power, telecoms or premises are affected, which is precisely when demand for information peaks. Modern edge platforms serve content from multiple global locations, so visitors overseas often see faster load times as well. Local hosting can make sense for systems with data residency requirements, but a public marketing and communications site rarely has such constraints, and the continuity benefit is substantial.
What should a storm status update contain?
Date and time, current operating status, what is known about the impact, what customers or guests should do next, how to reach you, and when the next update will be published. Keep it short and factual, avoid speculation about damage or reopening dates you cannot confirm, and place it at the top of the homepage rather than on a buried news page. Repeat the same wording on social channels so there is one authoritative version, and update on the schedule you promised even if the update is that nothing has changed.
How do we prepare bookings and client data for a storm?
Ensure that everything you would need to operate from another location exists in a copy held outside the territory: bookings and reservations, client and supplier contacts, outstanding invoices, insurance documents and key credentials in a password manager with recovery access for at least two people. Automate the export rather than relying on someone remembering during an evacuation, and test a restore before the season. Also confirm that at least one person off-island can access your website, email administration and social accounts.
When should hurricane preparation happen?
Complete the technical work in May, before the June to November season begins, and re-check after any significant website or supplier change. Preparation includes verifying backups by restoring one, confirming domain and DNS access, building and testing the status banner, updating emergency contact details and rehearsing who publishes updates. Doing this out of season takes a few hours; attempting it as a storm approaches competes with securing premises and staff, which is when critical steps get missed.
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