Websites for Costa Rica tour operators & charters - Direct booking, no OTA commission

Q: Do I have to leave Viator or GetYourGuide?

No. Most operators we work with 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 for a recommendation. Over time the direct channel grows and the 20-30% commission shrinks as a share of your revenue.

Why go direct

Five reasons it pays off.

No abstract "build your brand" talk. Concrete commission, cash flow, and the customers you already own.

Keep most of the 20-30% the marketplaces take

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% of every booking kept that used to go to the marketplace.

$1,000 charter, direct vs OTA: about $205 kept that used to go to the marketplace

Cash in hand at booking - not next month

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.

Direct: the deposit is in your account the moment the guest books · OTA / platform: monthly or twice-monthly payouts

Stop paying commission on guests who were already yours

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%.

Repeat & referral bookings are where the marketplace fee hurts most - and where direct wins fastest

Found on Google + AI search, not just the marketplace

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.

Own your guest list

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.

The math

What each booking channel costs you.

Same $100,000 of bookings, three different ways to take them. The only thing that changes is how much of it you keep.

Marketplace

Viator / GetYourGuide

25%

commission, typical (20-30%)

Great for first-time discovery
They keep the customer
Monthly payouts
You compete on their terms

- $25,000 gone

Booking software

Platforms like Peek

~10%

booking fee with card processing on top

6-8% booking fee
plus card processing stacked on top
Booking + checkout bundled in one fee
Payouts twice a month

- $10,000 gone

Your own site

Pulpería + ONVO Pay

4.5%

international cards · 1.5% local cards

No commission, no booking fee
You keep the customer + email
Paid out at confirmation
Bilingual, yours forever

$4,500 in card fees

$40k+

A mid-size operator moving even $200,000 of bookings to direct keeps roughly $40,000 a year that used to disappear into marketplace commission.

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.

What we build

Booking flows shaped to how you actually sell.

Tour operators

Trip pages & packages
Live availability
Deposit on booking
Reviews & photos
WhatsApp inquiries

Boat charters & fishing

Trip types & capacity
Half / full-day pricing
Deposits & weather terms
Gallery-led pages
Private vs shared booking

Shuttle & transport

Route & schedule pages
Instant quote
Pay online or on WhatsApp
Private & shared seats
Hotel pickup details

Multi-day & packages

Itinerary pages
Tiered & group pricing
Group deposits
Partner cross-sell
Bilingual EN/ES

Honest pricing

From $799. Scoped to you.

Where we start

The basic site

from $799

one-time · live in ~14 days

A fast, bilingual site that gets you found and looks like the operator you actually are - the foundation everything else plugs into.

✓Bilingual EN/ES out of the box
✓Your trips, photos & story
✓WhatsApp inquiry button
✓Standard SEO - sitemap, schema, indexed on Google
✓Self-serve CMS - edit it yourself
✓Mobile-perfect & fast
✓Google Business Profile help
✓The site is yours, forever

Get a quote →

Added on top, scoped to your operation

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.

+Route & instant-pricing pages - selectors, schedules, live quotes
+On-site payments - ONVO card + SINPE Móvil, money to your bank
+Booking / CRM integration - sync with your reservation system (Optimo, Bokun, FareHarbor and similar)
+Premium SEO & extra languages - keyword research, launch articles, AI search

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.

Care, if you want it

Optional monthly plans - keep it online, get found on Google, or let us run the whole marketing engine including social. ★ Quarterly billing. Annual saves 10%.

Online + CMS

Always live, always optimized

$29/mo

Hosting, security, monitoring and daily backups. You edit text, photos and prices yourself via the self-serve CMS - no waiting on us.

Hosting + SSL + monitoring
Daily backups
Self-serve CMS - edit text, photos, prices yourself, anytime
Monthly performance email - traffic, top pages, enquiries
Quarterly site health check

Choose Online

Care + SEO

Get found on Google

$49/mo

Everything in Online + CMS, plus regular SEO updates and optimisations - we keep your site climbing in search, month after month.

Everything in Online + CMS
Regular SEO updates & optimisations - on-page + technical, every month
Keyword tracking - we watch the searches that matter and adjust
1 SEO blog article per month - written and published for you
AI-search optimisation - so ChatGPT, Gemini & Google AI can recommend you
Search Console monitoring + monthly SEO report

Choose Care

Marketing + Email

Active site, light marketing

$69/mo

Everything in Care + SEO, plus your customer CRM, a captured email list, a welcome email flow with monthly emails, and a monthly dev request for whatever the CMS can't do.

Everything in Care + SEO
CRM setup & management - track every enquiry, repeat client, lead source
Email list capture - the popup fills a list we store and manage for you
Welcome flow + monthly emails included - EN or ES, sent to your list
1 SEO blog article per month - written and published for you
1 dev request per month (new pages / features / integrations)
Monthly site health report

Choose Marketing

Marketing extra

The marketing engine

From$129/mo

Everything in Marketing + Email, plus done-for-you social media, three blogs a month, active review requests, and Google Business Profile management.

Everything in Marketing + Email
Google Business Profile management - monthly posts, photo refresh, review responses
Social media management - from 8 posts per month, bilingual on Instagram + Facebook
Active review requests - happy clients nudged for a Google review
3 SEO blog articles per month (up from 1 in Care)
Ongoing SEO & AI search optimisation
1 dev request per month

Choose Marketing

Questions

The honest answers.

Do I have to leave Viator or GetYourGuide?

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.

How do payments work, and what is ONVO?

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.

When do I actually get paid?

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.

Can it handle charters, fishing, and shuttles - not just fixed tours?

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.

I already use booking software. Can you work with it?

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.

How much does it cost and how long does it take?

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.

Sámara · Costa Rica

Behind Pulpería Studio

Hi, I'm Lars.

Helping Costa Rica businesses get found, get booked, and keep the customers they earn - instead of renting them back from the platforms.

Most local businesses hand their customers - and a slice of every sale - to the big platforms. I build the infrastructure that lets you get found on Google and AI search, take bookings or orders directly, and own the relationship. That is the whole game.

I live in Sámara with my wife and two kids. I know what it costs to run a business on this coast - the slow season, the suppliers who do not show, the Hacienda paperwork, the platforms taking their cut. I built Pulpería to give local businesses infrastructure that respects all of that, not a London agency template painted in tropical colors.

Fifteen years in digital before this: founded several companies, senior product manager building the website experiences for Adidas, RetailMeNot, and Gumtree.com. Those years taught me how websites actually convert, how customers think, and how to ship something fast that works and is beautiful.

The person who builds your site is the same person who answers your WhatsApp. No account managers, no freelancer chains, no support tickets that vanish. One studio, one inbox, real attention to your business - that is the whole reason this works at our price.

Take bookings direct. Keep what Viator takes.