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

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.

Nothing you rely on goes away

You are not starting again. You are changing who takes the cut.

Switching a booking engine sounds like a fortnight of chaos. It is not. Your tours, your prices, your availability and your existing bookings all carry across, and the old system keeps running until the day you are happy.

01Your tours, prices and availability, carried over

02Bookings already in the system stay valid

03Card payments settle into your own account

04Confirmation, receipt and pickup reminder sent for you

05One calendar: online bookings plus the ones you take by phone

If a real share of your volume comes through resellers or agents, keep your platform for that. We do not do channel management, and we will say so rather than sell you something that costs you distribution.

Built by us · Guanacaste

Legend Tours & Shuttles

Tours, an ATV park and fixed-price transfers - three products that used to be three separate conversations, now booking and taking payment on Stéphane’s own domain. Hover any of these to scroll the real page.

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The siteThree languages, tours, ATV, charters and transfers.

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Book & payPrice, date and guests on the tour page. Paid at 11pm.

Legend transfers page with fixed-price routes

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Transfers tooFixed-price routes, booked exactly like a tour.

See it live and the ATV site →

Go through a booking on it yourself - that is the whole product, running.

What you actually own

Your website. Your booking. Your money.

On a platform, all three belong to somebody else and you rent them back. Here is where each one sits when it is yours.

Your website

On a platform, your booking pages live on their domain and the search value goes with them. Leave, and the pages leave too.

Yours: the site is on your own domain and built on standard hosting anyone can take over. The domain, the content and the search value stay with you whatever happens to us.

Your booking

Guest names, emails and history sit in the platform’s database. Marketing to your own past guests often means paying to reach them again.

Yours: every booking record is yours, exportable, with the guest’s details attached. Your repeat guests are a list you own, not an audience you rent.

Your money

Card payments route through the platform’s account and land with you on their schedule, minus their cut.

Yours: payments settle straight into your own merchant account at cost. We are never the merchant of record and never touch a guest payment.

Included as standard

The emails run themselves. Under your name.

Confirmation, receipt, balance reminder, arrival details - the operational layer the platform quietly runs for you today. Written once, sent automatically from your own domain, so every touchpoint builds your brand instead of theirs.

✓

Your tour is confirmed - Rio Celeste Waterfall, 14 March

[email protected]

Instant9:41

Payment received - $230 for 2 guests

[email protected]

Instant9:41

⏰

Your pickup is tomorrow at 6:15am - where to meet

[email protected]

Night before18:00

★

How was your day with us?

[email protected]

2 days after10:00

In the guest’s language, from your address. Guests never learn we exist.

How it works

Two ways to do it. Both keep your current setup running.

Most operators start here

Keep your site, move the booking

$39/month + 1.9% no setup fee · live in about two weeks

Your site stays exactly as it is - we add the booking to it
We carry over your tours, prices and availability
Card payments land in your own account from day one
Your current platform keeps running until you switch it off yourself

If the site is holding you back

New site, booking built in

from $799 + $39/month site one-time, booking monthly

A new bilingual site on your own domain
Booking built into the tour page rather than bolted on
Everything above, included
You own the site outright

From yes to first deposit

Day 1

Twenty minutes on WhatsApp. We look at your tours and your real numbers together.

Day 2-3

You get the plan and the price in writing. Nothing is signed and nothing is charged.

Week 1-2

We carry over tours, prices and availability. You review it before anything goes live.

Week 2-3

Live, taking bookings. Your first card payment lands in your own account.

What the others charge

At your size, not at a headline rate.

By booking volume, not by how many tours you list - that is the axis every platform in this market actually charges on. Assumes an average of $140 a booking. Competitor figures read from their own pricing pages in September 2026. FareHarbor and Peek publish nothing, so their rows use the range operators report.

What it costs youper year, all in	60 bookings a monthwhat you pay per year ↓	150 bookings a monthwhat you pay per year ↓	350 bookings a monthwhat you pay per year ↓
Pulpería$39/mo + 1.9%	$2,383/year	$5,256/year	$11,640/year
Rezdy$49-249/mo + 3%	$3,612/year	$8,148/year	$18,828/year
Checkfront$99/mo + 3%	$4,212/year	$8,748/year	$18,828/year
TicketingHubflat 3%	$3,024/year	$7,560/year	$17,640/year
Bokún$49/mo + 1.5%	$2,100/year	$4,368/year	$9,408/year
FareHarbor / Peekno published rate	Reported at 6% and up, added to the guest’s total. At 6% that is $6,048 / $15,120 / $35,280 - but only your statement shows your real rate.

What we charge

One price, published. Which is more than most of them do.

Keep your site

Booking layer only

$39/month + 1.9% no setup fee

Goes on the site you already have
Card payments straight into your own account, at cost
1.9% applies to direct bookings only - never to OTA or reseller volume
Month to month. The site and the domain stay yours

If the site needs it too

Site rebuild + booking

from $799 one-time, then the same monthly

Bilingual site on your domain, every tour with live dates
WhatsApp built into the flow where the pickup gets confirmed
Live in about two weeks
You own it outright

The gap is the part worth noticing. At 350 bookings a month our fee comes to about $11,640 a year - where Rezdy's 3% would take $18,828 and FareHarbor's reported rate would be over $35,000. The bigger you get, the more you keep.

The person you will actually deal with

Lars. I lead the work here.

Fifteen years building digital products in Europe - Adidas, Gumtree, RetailMeNot - now on the beach road in Sámara with my family.

I lead the work and our small team builds it: design, the booking layer, the Spanish, the hosting. You deal with me from the first message to the day it goes live, and after.

We are based here, in the tourism economy this town runs on. Your season is our season.

LinkedIn → WhatsApp →

Working with a small studio

Small enough to answer. Built so you never depend on us.

You get a person, not a ticket

The work here is led by me with a small team behind it. When you message on WhatsApp during your season, you get an answer the same day - not a case number and a queue.

And you are free to leave

The domain is yours. The site is yours. The payment account is yours and always was - we are never the merchant of record and never touch a guest payment. Month to month, no contract.

And if we vanished tomorrow

Your site keeps running on standard hosting anyone can take over, your bookings keep arriving, and your money keeps landing in your account. That is deliberate. A booking channel you could lose overnight is not a channel.

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 - which blends to around 3% for a typical operator. 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.

Your booking system works. The fee is the problem.

What your platform takes

You are not starting again. You are changing who takes the cut.

Legend Tours & Shuttles

Your website. Your booking. Your money.

Your website

Your booking

Your money

The emails run themselves. Under your name.

Two ways to do it. Both keep your current setup running.

Keep your site, move the booking

New site, booking built in

From yes to first deposit

At your size, not at a headline rate.

One price, published. Which is more than most of them do.

Booking layer only

Site rebuild + booking

Lars. I lead the work here.

Small enough to answer. Built so you never depend on us.

You get a person, not a ticket

And you are free to leave

And if we vanished tomorrow

The honest answers.

Tell us about your tours.