Name of your website?Manu Villas and Spa Dominical Costa Rica
Your name?
Alexander Hruby
Your Location (city, etc)
Dominical
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Manu is an all-inclusive villa rental retreat in Dominical Costa Rica that offers four private luxury residences and a spa with optional full service
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We advertise on several major villa rental sites like homeaway.com but want to give more additional information about our place. We also feature online booking services with credit cards.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
The first web site was launched 2004 with the first house on the property. 2007 we finished the new asian style villas we brought from Java and went online with the new Manu site.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Manu is a tree and hardwood species which is very hard and durable. The locals used it for fence posts. I bought over the years lots of them from the neigbors and we used it for stairs posts, doors. The name is short and even Gringos can spell it ...
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We want to improve on the services the usual villa rental has. We offer optional massages, maid services, tours and especially chef service. The whole place is run more profeccional than the usual vacation villa where the owners are not on site. We live on the 30 acre property and are involved in most of the services to ensure quality.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Goal? Right nor we are happy to run it and have a good live. In the last years we did very well compared to other vacation rentals in the area. We will see what the future brings ..
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
see above .... pretty happy with the outcome ... but there are definitly dark clouds on the horizon for the future ...
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I have a unlimited time budged ... well almost ... so I do pretty much what I think will get our internet precence up further on the google ladder ...
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I dont worry about that! The demand is limited to 80-90 ocupancy and so far we are at 50% so we have definitly room to grow.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Lots! building the place on top of a mountain in Costa Rica, bad roads, landslides, local work ethic, ICE, INS, Setena, Minea, .... in general the whole government organisatios are a joke down here.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Roads and organising the local crews at the building stage.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
local web sites and the big villa rental sites which send lots of customers
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
we grew with the web over time so the expectations also change over time.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
2004 and going ...
What is your website address?
Manu Villas and Spa Dominical Costa Rica
