The Future Looks Bright
The Costa Rican government in an effort to expand on the success of its Ecotourism movement has some big plans for the Osa peninsula. read more >>
The Web Site
By far our best marketing tool for the eco lodge business has been our web site: www.sabalolodge.com. We have worked extensively on this site with the goal of making it a great resource for information about the uniqueness and biodiversity of tropical rainforests as well as an effective marketing tool for the eco lodge. Our home page has recently been upgraded to a page rank 4 in Google. If you check out this link, you will see the many pages of content we have added to support this educational goal.
We also have recently incorporated a blog into our site that is another great resource for information and is very informative about the challenges and wonder of living in this unique environment.
To support our claim that we are truly a sustainable eco lodge, we have written up comprehensive eco policies that you can check out here. We have found that most lodges claiming to be eco lodges do not post any policies on their web site to back up this claim - we are one of the few.
Here is a summary of the value added to our web site:
Advertising
We are members of and pay yearly dues to the following sites for lead generation:
We are willing to share with the future owner other advertising ideas we have to help expand the lodge business as well as ideas on how to tap into the European market; we can also share advertising tips that a few other lodge owners in Costa Rica swear by.
Guide Books and Travel Sites
We are listed in the major travel guide books for Costa Rica: Lonely Planet, Moon, Fodors and Frommers. The Lonely Planet Costa Rica 2008 Edition gave us a nice review which has helped us to procure a number of guests.
Due to us keeping the business small, we have been able to deliver top notch personalized service to our guests. We don’t believe in skimping to save a few bucks and feel we have spoiled our guests with excellent personal attention and high quality home-cooked meals. But don’t just take our word for it - check out our reviews here on Trip Advisor.com.
Travel Agents
We have established relationships with a few travel agents in Costa Rica but this is a source of leads that we haven’t vigorously pursued and is a potential untapped market for the future owner of the lodge. Since we are a small operation and try to run it “lean and mean”; in other words doing a lot of the work ourselves with minimal employees, we have been able to keep our prices competitive and still make a decent profit from the business. Because travel agents want a 20% and sometimes higher commision, we’d have to increase our pricing structure which we prefer not to do at this time.
We feel that if the future owner of this lodge wants to expand the business and is willing to invest some capital to do this, adding things like extra cabins, decorator items, hot water heaters, ceiling fans, etc. would warrant a higher price point. This in turn would make pursuing leads through travel agencies a more attractive proposition. It is also a key way to expand the business according to other well established lodge owners we have chatted with.
Relationships With Other Lodges
One of the favorite packages of our guests is Tour Pack A where guests spend three nights at our lodge and two at a beach front lodge at Drake Bay. Included in the package is all transportation, meals, accommodations, a guided tour to Corcovado and several tours at our lodge. We have established good relationships with three lodges in Drake Bay to send guests to for this package. We will supply the future owner of the lodge with a write up of all this information and introduce him/her to the Drake Bay lodge owners.
A Complete Write-up Along With a Few Extras
When turning over a business “hat” to another, we understand the importance of having written information to refer back to. That is why we will include a complete write-up of everything we do to make this business successful. This will include such things as responding to inquiries, where to shop for groceries, meal planning, successful recipes, dealing with employees, transportation issues, activities as well as the day-to-day operations (running the generator, pumping the water, machinery maintenance, grounds maintenance, etc.). We will supply you with a complete list of contact information of all past guests as well as email addresses of all past guest inquiries.
We are also willing to stay for as long as you need (within reason) to turn over the business “hat” to your new manager or we are willing to work out an employment contract if you would like us to stay and be your business managers.
Another “extra” we will include is advise on how do deal with employees. Labor laws are quite different in Costa Rica than in other countries and tend to highly favor the Costa Rican workers. This is great for the workers but difficult for the small business owners who are operating on a tight budget. We will give you 10 hours of free advise on the possible issues that may come up with employees, how to deal with these issues and how to best protect your assets. We highly recommend the future owner retains a good attorney educated in labor laws to verify all the information we supply for its accuracy. However even with the best attorney, we have found that unless you know what specific questions to ask them, they are not very forthcoming with their information. Had we had someone give us the same advise that we are willing to share with the future owner, it would have saved us lots of time, money and headaches!
Lodge Books
Due to being so remote, we have not hired a professional accountant to do formal bookkeeping. We can however supply an Excel spreadsheet (to serious buyers only) that lists invoices paid in and expenses paid out for the past two years we have been in business. To give a general overview, we have averaged about 55 - 65 guests per tourist season and about $275 in profit per guest. The income produced from the lodge has covered our basic expenses and allowed us to do some minor upgrades/repairs to the lodge as well.
If You Built It Today
Timing is everything and that applies to when we re-built Sabalo Eco Lodge. Here in Costa Rica the prices of things have gone way up from a few years ago. read more >>
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