I welcome recommendations (specific please) about the best value
travel arrangements for a five to six day visit to Barbados Nov 13 to
18.  Will be traveling with my wife (10th anniversary on the 14th) and
six year old son from Ottawa, Canada.  I need to be able to conduct
business (one or two key meetings) on the island presumably during the
day of the 14th and or the 17th -- have a local contact there who will
provide very specific insights, but welcome additional
references/contacts re my ultimate objective of establishing a local
publishing business linked to my existing mutinational (US/Canadian)
enterprise.  I suspect best value flights will be with US airways
(cheap tickets coupled with first class upgrade certs should provide
reasonable value) but am not sure about hotels, etc.

Dear Marbuck, This looks like two completely different questions: (1)
travel arrangements, (2) local contacts for setting up a publishing
business.

On (1), I think hotwire and priceline are good for first-class hotels.
However, if you're planning to visit often, you may want to find a
more personal lodging, like a Bed and Breakfast, somewhere you can
have somebody take, and forward, messages for you when you're not in
Bermuda.

On (2), setting up a publishing business, I'm a great believer in
'scouting out the terrain' in a very general sense before focussing in
on, say, 'key contacts'. That way you get a multi-dimensional
perspective, rather than something 'true' but lopsided .... So I would
talk to the local chamber of commerce (overview on how regulations and
utilities work, for example, + tax incentives, workplace culture, how
publishers fare), other publishers (or their staff), and all the
publishing freelances, particularly the writers, for costs, pay rates,
markets, topics, printers, and other publishing issues.