Bilingual booking websites for tour operators, boat charters, fishing trips, and shuttle companies across Costa Rica. The big marketplaces take 20-30% of every booking. Your own site, with local card processing, takes about 4.5% - and pays out the moment a guest confirms. Live in 14 days.
No abstract "build your brand" talk. Concrete commission, cash flow, and the customers you already own.
Viator and GetYourGuide take 20-30% of each booking - a typical operator pays around 25%. Your own site with local card processing costs about 4.5%. That gap is roughly 20 cents kept on every dollar you move to direct.
OTAs typically pay out monthly. Some booking platforms release funds only twice a month. When you are paying for fuel, guides, and permits up front, that delay is real. With a direct booking, the deposit lands in your account the moment the guest confirms.
Repeat guests, hotel and villa referrals, the family that found you last season - many of your bookings were coming to you anyway. Without a direct site, every one of them still runs through the marketplace and you pay the commission again. With one, those bookings cost you about 4.5% instead of 25%.
Your Viator listing is invisible to Google's organic results and to AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. A proper bilingual site is indexed and discoverable. Travelers searching "catamaran sunset tour Sámara" or "fishing charter Guanacaste" - or asking an AI to plan their trip - can actually find you direct.
The marketplace keeps the customer relationship - you rarely get a real email, and you cannot follow up. On your own site you capture the booking, the email, and permission to invite them back next season or cross-sell another trip. That list is an asset the OTA will never hand you.
Same $100,000 of bookings, three different ways to take them. The only thing that changes is how much of it you keep.
Illustration, not a quote. Your real number depends on how much of your volume moves to direct, your mix of local vs international cards, and whether you currently absorb platform fees or pass them to guests. We will run your actual numbers with you before you commit to anything.
One honest note: you still want a booking engine - the calendar that holds availability and fires confirmations. Peek bundles that with checkout into one ~10% fee. A dedicated booking system costs a fraction of that, and we integrate it alongside on-site ONVO payments rather than charging you a marketplace cut - you keep the engine you run, we give it a branded home.
Tour and charter builds are underway now. In the meantime, walk through the live bilingual direct-booking sites we have shipped for Costa Rican rentals and local businesses - the same craft and the same engine, shaped to a different kind of booking.
See the sites we have built→A fast, bilingual site that gets you found and looks like the operator you actually are - the foundation everything else plugs into.
The basic site is the starting point. What gets added depends on how you run - we quote it once we understand your setup, since it turns on the integration type and what your booking system supports.
Optional care from $29/month - hosting, payment upkeep, SEO articles, dev requests. Add aerial drone footage $249 for cinematic trip and vessel shots. Cancel anytime.
No. Most operators keep their OTA listings. Your direct site runs in parallel - same trips, same availability. The OTAs keep bringing first-time discovery; your own site captures repeat guests, hotel referrals, and anyone who finds you on Google or asks an AI. Over time the direct channel grows and the 20-30% commission shrinks as a share of your revenue.
ONVO Pay is a Costa Rican payment processor. We integrate it into your site so guests pay on your page and the money lands in your account - we never touch it. Rates are about 4.5% on international cards and 1.5% on local cards. That replaces a 20-30% OTA commission, or a booking-software fee that often runs 8-10% all-in once you add card processing.
On a direct booking, the deposit hits your account when the guest confirms - not weeks later. OTAs typically pay out monthly, and some booking platforms pay only twice a month. For an operator covering fuel, guides, and permits up front, the deposit at booking is a real cash-flow difference, not just a fee saving.
Yes. We build for trip types with capacity limits, tiered pricing, group deposits, and seasonal availability. Charters and fishing trips get gallery-led pages, deposit-on-booking, and clear cancellation and weather terms. Shuttle companies get route pages, instant quotes, and WhatsApp plus online payment. We shape the booking flow to how you sell.
Usually, yes. If you have a booking engine you like, we can embed it or link to it from a site that finally looks like your brand. If you want to move off a high-fee platform, we can build the booking and payment flow directly into your site. We show you the options and trade-offs before we build - never a drastic switch without your call.
Basic bilingual sites start at $799 and go live in about 14 days. Everything beyond that - route and instant-pricing pages, on-site card and SINPE payments through ONVO, and booking or CRM integration with your reservation system - is scoped per project, since it depends on the integration type and what your booking system supports. The site is yours forever; optional Care plans from $29/month cover hosting and upkeep.
WhatsApp is fastest - text or voice notes, whatever is easiest for you. We answer within an hour. No bots, no platform. A real person who lives here, will listen first, and run your real numbers before pitching anything. A cafecito beats a quote any day.