Your guests found you on Booking.com. Next time, they book you directly.
Kova builds the direct booking system that wins back the commission you pay the platforms, and brings last season's guests back for the quiet weeks.
A full camp is not the same as a profitable one. Every bed booked through a platform hands back 15 to 25 per cent of the stay before you have paid a single wage.
The platform keeps the guest's details too. Next year the same surfer finds you through it again, and you pay again. Booking.com and the rest have their place. They just shouldn't be the only way in.
What the platforms cost your camp
Change the numbers to match your camp. It's an estimate, not a promise. The audit works out your real figures.
Three steps, and you can stop after the first
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01
Free audit
Your OTA Dependency Score
I go through your real booking path and estimate what the platforms cost you each year. You get a short video with your number and the three moves worth making first.
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02
Direct Booking Build
One-off project
The system that lets guests book you direct and keeps their details: a booking flow that works on a phone, email capture, and the emails that bring past guests back.
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03
Run it every month
Flat monthly retainer
Campaigns to past guests ahead of the shoulder weeks, and your direct share tracked every month. Any performance fee only starts once the commission you've saved has covered what you pay me.
What stood in the way at Ondas Novas
Before you can win back commission, guests have to be able to book you direct. This is what I found at one camp in Galicia in March.
- 7.1 seconds
to load on a phone. Most guests arrive from Instagram on their phone, and a page that slow loses many of them before they read a word.
- 18 clicks
to book a surf lesson, with a broken button along the way, no prices on the service pages and the booking page labelled "Shop".
- Hidden story
The camp's real strengths, serious coaching and no party-camp scene, barely appeared on the pages where guests decide.
“I was not expecting anything near this level. This is insane good work.”
I'm Francis. I surf, I travel the Atlantic coast to do it, and I started Kova for one problem: good camps filling every bed and still watching a big slice of the money go to the platforms.
Kova only works with surf camps, and only a few at a time, in person where I can. The conversation is about money you can measure, not likes or followers.
Francis, founder
See what the platforms cost you
Tell me your camp and I'll send back your OTA Dependency Score: the commission you're likely paying and the three moves to win it back. It comes as a short video, within a few days.
I'm taking on three founding camps this winter, on reduced founding terms.
Rather email? francis@kovastudios.co.uk
Got it
I'll look at your booking path and send your score by video within a few days.