Isla Verde

A booking site for a small-group travel company that refuses to look, or behave, like a travel company.

Year: 2024
Location: Remote (Seychelles & Johannesburg)
Duration: 10 weeks

Client: Isla Verde Travel
Role: Identity, Web design, Booking build
Discipline: Web & Digital
Delivered: 2024 · 10 weeks

The problem

What we were actually solving

Isla Verde runs eight trips a year for twelve people at a time. Bookings came in by email, availability lived in a spreadsheet, and double-bookings had happened twice. Their competition is a sea of saturated sunsets, script typefaces and booking widgets that feel like buying a flight.

The approach

Interior arch framing an ocean sunset with a sheer curtain

How the work was made

The identity was rebuilt to feel like a field record rather than a brochure: coordinates, dates, elevation, water temperature. Colour is drawn from aerial photography rather than from tourism convention, and no image may include a person looking at the camera.

Booking is a four-step flow with real availability, a deposit payment and an automatic hold that expires. There is no account to create, no upsell interstitial, and no countdown timer manufacturing urgency for a trip that genuinely does sell out.

The back end is deliberately small: a single availability model that the founder maintains from her phone, with automated confirmation, reminder and packing-list emails hanging off it.

The outcome

Enquiry volume rose 41% in the first two seasons, the average booking window lengthened, and there have been no double-bookings since launch.

Enquiries in the first two seasons post-launch: +41%Enquiries in the first two seasons post-launch
Double-bookings since the spreadsheet was retired: 0Double-bookings since the spreadsheet was retired
Trips a year, all sold out since launch: 8Trips a year, all sold out since launch
Weeks from kickoff to live booking: 10Weeks from kickoff to live booking