Castaways Resorts benefits from local business advisor in the Cook Islands

Castaway Resort has become the first business to take advantage of a new initiative providing expert assistance and other resources to local Cook Islands businesses.

The best part is, that expert assistance cost Castaway owner Paul Ash absolutely nothing.

Business Link Pacific (BLP) is a New Zealand-funded private sector development programme set up to help support small and medium-sized local enterprises (those with 5-50 employees) in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea.

One of the primary ways BLP is looking to support Cook Islands-based enterprises is through their newly established in-country network of local Business Advisory Service Providers (BASPs).

BLP-approved BASPs are qualified, professional individuals and organisations offering all kinds of expert advice – on subjects as diverse as accounting, marketing, information technology and human resources – to help people like Paul Ash enhance the way they do business.

Local BASPs – who can be found on the BLP website businesslinkpacific.com – currently include the Cook Islands Chamber of Commerce, digital media agency Creators Hype and national airline Air Rarotonga, as well as a growing list of other expert business advisors.

“Any assistance programmes like this, you’re nuts not to have a look at it and utilise it,” says Ash, who tapped into the expertise of Air Rarotonga’s chief financial officer, Anand Naidu, to help him work out Castaway Resort’s financial position moving forward.

Naidu, an expert in business strategy, continuity planning, accounting and financial management, helped Ash collate and organise Castaway’s financial information for presentation to shareholders.

“It was a lucky break to get Anand’s help, so I’m very grateful,” says Ash. 

“When you get someone of that calibre formatting things for you, you get to understand the financial aspects of your own business that much more,” he adds.

And because this BLP-approved project was related to helping Castaway survive the economic effects of COVID-19, it was 100 per cent-subsidised – Ash never had to pay out a single cent for the business advice or project.

While BLP normally offers a general subsidy of up to 50 per cent for work undertaken by approved advisors, their COVID-19 response subsidy covers up to 100 per cent of costs for services that support business continuity, contingency planning, access to available financial packages, refinancing and renegotiating loans and new working setups, such as IT systems, access to communications platforms and cloud-based software.

Find out more about BLP’s subsidy scheme and other offerings here!