Edit: Saw the URL from another comment. Great work, simple and does exactly what’s needed.

We also track what horses have been used and how much so that we're not riding them into the ground — the people on the ground have an app I built in Framework7 to manage everything; they love it and Framework7 is very fun once you get rolling.

We ask for a 20% deposit to "hold [your] horses" and to prevent no-shows; the rest is transacted at the ranch (though we make the option to pay in full available if you email us). Our cancellation policy extremely flexible and though we say 24 hours on the site, we've never not refunded someone.

Some fun factoids:

* typical rider is 35-44. Less than 10% of riders are under the age of 24,

* about half of people book when they're in Mexico

* average lead time is 7 days

* about 66% of riders have riding exp; about 33% consider themselves "novice" or "expert" riders

* 45% of riders are male, 55% are female

* 1 rider reported they are from Antartica

You must get business card made and start distributing them to friends and family whenever you get the chance. Not for marketing - to brag and to be able to be mildly annoying.

Great tip in general!

That is an incredibly early memory! 3-4 is more typical, and 2 is usually the earliest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia

Obligatory disclosure: some semblance of ownership.

Wish I could go to Mexico and do this! :)

I did something very similar for Surfing schools. Not yet making any money off it, but I am trying to. Reaching out to other surfing schools, improving the product adding new features.

Most business' official website are a Facebook page.

In a country of 150M people and growing expat presence, there is a TON of opportunities for software businesses to enter the market.

For example: Riviera Maya has no MLS style real estate tracker/listing platform. The entire real estate industry operates on word of mouth, WhatsApp and Facebook messages.

I've many times seen web presences fail for small organizations, when the only person that understands the web set up leaves. With Facebook, that doesn't happen.

I'm sure there are services such as you describe, and probably many restaurants use them, and it's not obvious. But Facebook is the default.

Others have pointed out the simplicity of it. Just use an existing platform, doesn't take much IT skill at all.

The other answer is that this is where the people are. Why waste time building your own website when only those searching you will visit it? Interacting with the various social media platforms instead gives you far more options on discoverability.

If you must maintain a presence on those platforms anyways, it becomes even less compelling for a small non-tech company to maintain their own infrastructure.

Genuinely curious. I've always hated sales but would love to work on making existing solutions better.

Right now depending on how much effort you want to spend, you can get a place for $2000 usd a month or $600 a month, for relatively similar unit maybe 20min of walk distance apart. Simply because information does not flow freely.

Airbnb fixed the trust issue and dominated rental market in the last few years. But hefty fees + taxes are making them less and less viable for travelers.

I honestly see a big opportunity to just improve the overall experience. Especially considering Riviera Maya is the fasted growing realestate market in Mexico.

If you're serious about working on something like this, email me (check my profile), let's connect.

That is what not having proper net neutrality is in Mexico.

E-commerce platforms, “sharing economy” apps, neo-banks, dating apps, real estate platforms, etc. are all used every single day by millions of people.

How would you typically find a place to rent where you live?

Facebook doesn't act as the central trust authority. So as an expat, most realtor is telling me to avoid FB and use them because scams. But as a user it's inefficient to talk to 20 Realtors for 20 listings.

I just want something in between that doesn't inflate the actual price by 40%

I remember trying to book a place and there was some issue with the z-index and I couldn't click to confirm the dates on the pop-up calendar. Made me wonder how much $$$ they could be losing because the % of people willing/know how to delete the offending element must be pretty small.

I agree 100% with what you're saying though. Older websites appear more "complex" to a lot of people. There's good middle grounds though. The new netflix for iOS is really nice, imo. Leans more towards form but still functions very well.

It’s in-house. I wasn’t happy with anything we tried, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

It’s in-house. I wasn’t happy with anything we tried, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Of course our business is centered around repeat riders, it would be a very different business to organize trail rides for strangers.

Our barn is much smaller than most (7 horses at the high water) but it has been consistently profitable. A barn with more horses and a large staff could bring in more revenue but costs will be higher too. There is a barn down the road that has nice facilities but has had several managers and has only been viable with the last one. We know another troubled barn with an alcoholic owner who has a large off-farm income that has struggled economically and has a legendarily bad safety culture. (I took 10 rides there before we were in full swing and had 3 'near miss' accidents)