About Ometepe info
Ometepe info is a website where tourists can find everything they need for their travel to Ometepe. They can find information, and they can look for what businesses are offering on the island. If you want tourists to easily find your business and attract customers you can create an account for your business. From there you can add one or multiple listings. It is suitable for many types of businesses, like accommodations, restaurants, tour guides, vehicle rentals, events, and many other services. If you just want a simple listing it is completely free to add.
Yes it’s possible to let customers book your service trough Ometepe info. This way you can already attract customers even when they are still abroad. You can even connect the availability with other websites trough Ical. The customer will pay an advance booking payment of 8% commission trough the website, and the rest of the amount will be paid cash to you when they arrive.
Every business can post as many free listings as they want, so it doesn’t have to cost you any money and is completely free in most cases. Only when you let customers pay for a booking trough the website there is a commission of 8% for administration and payment processor costs, that is paid by the customer. It’s a lot cheaper to use than the big companies like Booking.com, Airbnb and Tripadvisor.
Making an account
Click on the ‘sign in’ button on top of the page, then on the tab ‘register’. It should automatically stand on ‘owner’, there you can fill in all the necessary details and create the account.
It’s not necessary, but it depends on what you want. If you have multiple businesses, or different components (for example a restaurant and renting out rooms) within your business you do have to make a new listing for each one. But you can make several listings from 1 account, so 1 is sufficient. Only if you think it helps you in having a better overview over different business (components) you can create multiple accounts.
Adding a listing
After you have made an account and are logged in, you’ll see a button with ‘add listing’ in the right top corner. You’ll have to choose the package you want, and then the right category for your business. After that you can fill in all the necessary information about your business and add photo’s. At least always fill in a title, choose a subcategory, add photo’s to the gallery and write a description. With only this basic information it’s possible to post a listing, but to get the maximum customers it’s good to fill out some more details.
You should make a listing for each different business or business component you have. So if for example you rent out rooms and you have a restaurant, it’s best to make a separate listing for each. If you don’t want to use the booking functionality, but only promote your business it’s possible to have multiple options in one listing. For example all rooms in one listing, all tours in one listing, all rental vehicles in one listing. But if you want to use the booking functionality then you need a separate listing for each room, each tour, and each rental vehicle. This is to manage the availability of each.
The standard package is free, and you can add as many listings you want with this package. If you want to attract more customers and stand out from other business owners you can choose one of the premium packages. With both you’ll get a few extra features, like being able to add social media links for your business or add a video. The extended package will show your listing above others in the same category for 30 days, and with the professional package this is for 90 days.
Here is an overview, choose the one that fits with your business.
Service categories
ATM
Attractions – beach, walking path, waterfall, petroglyphs, natural swimming pool, etc.
Food & drinks – cafes and restaurants
Gas stations
Health & Wellbeing – practitioners like massage, coaching, alternative therapy, etc.
Services – hairdresser, repair service, laundry service, doctor, etc.
Shops – supermarkets, minimarket, clothing, natural products, etc.
Tours – all organized tours with a guide
Transport – ports, bus stops, ferry’s and taxi services
Rent categories
Accommodations – hotel, hostel, house for rent, etc.
Vehicle rentals – vehicle rentals for car, motor, scooter, quad, etc.
Event category
Events – yoga, workshops, retreats, etc.
Next to giving your listing a title and description, it’s important to fill out keywords that describe your business. You can find these in the ‘basic information’ on top. Here you should fill in words that people can search for in the search bar on the homepage and let them find your business. For example if you own a nice house that you want to rent out, that is located in a quiet location close to the lake, you can have keywords like ‘natural’, ‘peaceful’, ‘quite’, ‘beach’, ‘comfortable’, ‘lake house’, ‘cabin’, ‘vacation rental’, etc.
Also always give a subcategory to your business, and then you can check some features or descriptions. These will also be used by people to search on.
You can fill in an address, but often this is difficult and it doesn’t have to be completely correct. The most important is to fill in the longitude and latitude. This will decide where your pin will show up on the map. You can find this by going to Google maps, and click with your right mouse on the right location. The numbers you see on top are the latitude (starts with 11) and longitude (starts with -85).
Using the booking functionality
The booking functionality is the most useful for rental categories, where you can book per day/night. For tours this can also be used perfectly. Another option is for services to book per hour. And for events you can sell tickets.
The booking system works with an 8% advance payment that the customers has to pay during the booking process, this is the website commission. The rest of the payment will be done in cash to you when the customers arrives. If you do want to have the full amount in advance, you can message the customer yourself and ask them to send you a PayPal payment.
When you check this box, customers can book and the booking is immediately approved.
Leave the box unchecked if you want to manually approve a booking. When a customer books you’ll receive a booking request that first needs to be accepted by you before the booking is approved. You can message first with the customer when necessary.
Yes it’s possible to do this in the section ‘pricing and bookable services’. You can fill in extra services that people can book on top of the normal booking. So for example if you rent an accommodation you can add breakfast, or a transfer from the ferry. Fill in the details and set the price. Customers can click on these when they book as extra options, and will have to pay the extra fee.
You can use Ical if you have your listing also on other websites like booking.com, Airbnb or Tripadvisor. It’s important to set up a connection so you don’t get bookings for the same day/night on 2 different platforms. Ical can only be set up after filling out all other details and submitting your listing. Once your listing is submitted you can find the listing in your dashboard. Click the Ical button, and fill in the import and export link. You can do this for multiple websites. After set up the websites will automatically synchronize every 30 minutes.
Managing dashboard
In the dashboard you can find different tabs. You can see an overview of your listings and make changes in them. You can see your bookings in calendar and list view., and can send messages to customers trough the platform. You can see the income you’ve made so far, and in analytics you can see the amount of page views.
General
Customers can cancel their booking up to 48 hours before the booking date/time. If they cancel after that they’ll loose their 8% advance payment, so they’ll be less inclined to cancel. Unfortunately in case they do cancel it’s not possible to get your full payment, since this is cash. If you want to avoid this you can ask the customer to pay the full amount in advance trough PayPal. Read more in our full cancellation policy.
Yes if you can’t add your own listing it is possible to send an email to contact@ometepeinfo.com with your business name, a description, your location, your contact details and some pictures. We can add your listing to the website. If later you do want to manage it yourself, you can make an account and click the button on the listing that says ‘claim this listing’.
Still can't find what you're looking for?
When something is still unclear how to do it, you can search in the instruction manual. This is a good overview of all the steps you can take with a lot of explanation and screenshots to make everything more clear.