By Susan Holly

With this article, Southwest Florida Business begins a series that will follow new businesses as they establish themselves in Southwest Florida. We will track their progress, their challenges and their successes. We will check back with each one every few months to see what problems they have encountered and how they are solving them. Businesses, like people, can learn from the experiences of others. We hope to share some of those experiences through our Business Diary. We begin the series with an Internet-based start-up called The Tropical Traveler.

You're shivering at your computer in, say, snowy Minneapolis, cruising the Web, looking for a little diversion. So you type in http://www.sanibelislandvacation.comjust to see what warm daydream might show up on your screen. What you will find is TropicalTraveler.com, a recently launched Fort Myers-based Internet travel site.

About two years ago Chuck Lunsford was working with a small resort on Sanibel, developing its Web site and trying to generate traffic on the site. He worked for months getting the site indexed and on the top search engines, so that when someone searched for "Sanibel," for example, his Web page would come up somewhere near the top of the list. What he discovered, however, was it didn't make a noticeable difference in Web traffic.

A lot of people in the business told him the way to be noticed on the Web is with a brand name, or in the dot-com world, a domain name. What if, he asked, someone could type in www.Sanibel.com, and find my Web site?

So Lunsford went out and bought the domain name, Sanibel.com. Then he bought Captiva.com. "We knew we had something, but we weren't sure what," says the former Navy submarine man.

After setting up these domain names, traffic to the resort's Web site increased significantly. So he bought more domain names, and more, and more, and more: Sanibelaccommodations.com, Sanibelinformation.com, Sanibelislandresorts.com, Captivaislandvacations.com, Fortmyersbeachfishing.com, Bonitabeachdining.com, Marcoislandlodging.com, Naplesfloridagolfing.com, Southwestfloridamotels.com, Useppaislandflorida.com .you get the picture.

At the same time, Lunsford began to take note of some of the recurring questions coming through e-mail--where can we eat, rent bikes, find a fishing guide, etc.? As Lunsford puts it, "You don't have to hit me on the head twice." The idea for The Tropical Traveler had been born.

Lunsford got to work developing a regional site that would provide such information to the traveling public looking to come to Southwest Florida. The Tropical Traveler contains advertising and links to Southwest Florida resorts and other tourist-dependent businesses, as well as content on history, weather, attractions, and eco-tourism.

After several months in development, the company had its official launch in February. It is getting an average of 2,500 visitors each day, says Lunsford-and that's using only a portion of its collection of domain names, which now numbers more than 2,000.

An Internet user who types in one of these domain names will end up at The Tropical Traveler Web site. "Search engines are a tool, but more people are finding us by going to the URL address line of their browsers and typing in "www.Captiva.com" or another name and seeing what they come up with," explains Lunsford. "It's better than getting 28,000 Web pages to look through when you type in 'Captiva' on a search engine."

The company that started with just Lunsford and a silent partner has now expanded to 10 full-time employees. It recently moved into larger quarters and is gearing up for more growth. In the fast-paced world of the Internet, keeping up can be a big problem, but this Internet start-up is moving carefully, says Lunsford, cautioning that "rapid growth can kill you as fast as no growth."

Right now, the company is focusing its Web site on Southwest Florida, but would like to cover all of the state of Florida within the next year. "I feel like we can," says Lunsford. "We're taking it carefully. We want to make sure we're ready for that kind of volume. We want to make sure we have customer service in place before that." Within a year, Lunsford anticipates the staff will increase to at least 30, maybe as high as 50.

The bumps in the road so far have not been insurmountable. Web-site design has been one of the biggest challenges. "We didn't plan on having a lot of that kind of business," explains Lunsford, but the demand has been huge from businesses that don't have Web sites. They want to be online, but don't know how, he says. "Keeping up with Web-site jobs has been difficult."

Another challenge has been making full use of domain names. "We're getting 60 percent of their worth as far as traffic on the Internet," says Lunsford. "It's a matter of buying the right software and educating myself. "You have to experiment with things-break a few eggs."

The next year will bring a number of challenges in growing the business. The partners are discussing buying some advertising in their feeder markets-Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis. They may consider radio/TV, billboards, and direct-mail postcards. Improving the look of The Tropical Traveler site itself is also part of the plan in the near future.

The only part of the start-up that Lunsford regrets at this point is, perhaps, the late start. "I wish I'd gotten started four to five years ago. It's staggering what the Internet is growing into."

Likewise, The Tropical Traveler is thinking big. It has plans to expand beyond Florida, developing sites for other states, Caribbean islands, and several recreational activities. "We want to make sure we know what we're doing [in Southwest Florida] first," says Lunsford. "We will develop a business model here and then plug it in somewhere else."

A clue to the company's future direction may lie in some of the hundreds more domain names The Tropical Traveler is sitting on: PhoenixArizona.com, TucsonArizona.com, AlabamaCampgrounds.com, Diver.com.

Susan Holly is a freelance writer and editor, based on Sanibel.