Beach vacations are pricey. Less expensive foreign options aren't always easy or reliable.

People all around the world are looking for an amazing beach vacation, and price and quality are the greatest risks to arriving at a wonderful vacation experience.

To achieve quality, travelers may pay 3-10X the price for a resort that's often operated by a major company.

To achieve price, many travelers may elect a lower cost foreign adventure that lacks high-quality standards.

1. No English. La Boquilla is local. It is difficult for travelers to understand and navigate the high quality food options on the beach, negotiate, or choose the best beach experiences due to language, uncertainty, disorganization, and overall awkwardness. Without Western commerce, it's difficult to know how to be a customer.

2. Low quality dining environment. Even though the food is high quality, with fresh caught fish and hand-prepared meals that should cost $100 per plate, customers sit on plastic chairs and wait at plastic tables under temporary cloth tents. A few local sales people may disrupt travelers during their meal on the beach, occasionally blocking the view with sunglasses, massage, or ceviche carts and offerings. There is currently no protection from soliciting or disruption on any beach in Cartagena.

3. Low quality spa environment. The “spa” services on La Boquilla are currently just a masseuse who walks the beach and offers a massage on a temporary bed under a temporary tent. The price point of $25 per hour is extremely low, but the quality of experience is often unappealing for foreign travelers.

4. No appealing community to engage with. For the single, foreign traveler, there aren't any young people, community, events, or eye candy that draws the crowd. Locals in their 20s-40s don't often travel to La Boquilla because it's 20 minutes from the Downtown Historic center and there isn't a destination or event to engage with.

5. No high quality hotel. There is one beach type property with 7 small rooms, directly on the sand, that operates as a hotel. It is not well-managed, well-promoted, and it is low rated on AirBnB due to inconsistent hotel quality and service. Their website does not make it clear for travelers on how to arrive at the hotel. In the end, it feels more like a beach house with a pool, than a hotel.

6. No events or promotion. La Boquilla is not well-promoted. It is located near the resort-like apartment buildings, approximately 5-15 minutes of beach walking. Travelers may occasionally wander into La Boquilla, but it is difficult to know about the experiences on the beach prior to arrival. The kite surfing schools are not clearly promoted in the apartment towers. Fishing tours are not promoted and packaged. Restaurants are not branded well or digitally promoted. Custom cocktails, spa, ceviche, and even the hotels feel more like an invitation and a hustle that a real business and brand.

Overall: Travelers want a high quality beach trip at a lower cost. La Boquilla is under built, under promoted, under utilized, and ripe for opportunity.

Best Life Beach House is a high quality, boutique hotel right on the sand of the beach in La Boquilla, Cartagena.

Best Life Beach House is partnered with the best local restaurants, experiential guides, and vendors to bring the best experiences, best food, and best guides from the local community to our boutique hotel, to meet the quality standards of international travelers.

With English-speaking services and experience packages that support our target traveler's expectations and desires, Best Life Beach House functions as a tourism agency, helping travelers maximize price and quality of their beach vacation.

We are testing our first boutique hotel and business model in La Boquilla, Cartagena. The business model, community staff, and frameworks for partnered services can be scaled and replicated to fit other beautiful, lesser-known beaches across the world.

1. The beautiful beach views and relaxing environment has made La Boquilla our launch location. As a quietly growing, cultural gem, filled with specialists through family-operated small businesses, La Boquilla is the prefect place to create our flagship location.

2. The highest quality meals you can find in Cartagena are created by the local fisherman, family cooks, beach restaurants, and 'runners' that serve meals to wandering customers that walk into the beach.

3. Low prices for fresh local food, custom cocktails, and beach services like kite surfing, massages, and fishing. Low prices allow Best Life Beach House to package and resell services, build commission-based partnerships, and vertically integrate the best, highest demand experiences and specialists that provide them.

4. First mover destination opportunity. Within a 1.5 mile radius, there is little to no competition from any high quality beach hotel in La Boquilla. Sky high apartment towers are within 5-15 minutes of walking distance, but are currently not promoting La Baquilla as a tourist attraction.

5. Location. Just 20 minutes taxi from the downtown historic district of Cartagena. The beach is 2-3 minutes drive from large resort-style buildings that thousands of foreign travelers stay in for an average of $70-$300 per night.

6. Promotion. With modern digital marketing strategies, multi-channel, social, SEO, and an English-speaking website -- digital marketing can make this beach a top rank destination for global travelers seeking beach life in Cartagena.

7. Low Cost Staff. With no minimum pay laws in Colombia, and many young people looking for work, there is a huge opportunity to attract travelers through our high quality staff. It would be about 20X more expensive to hire and keep the same quality of staff and specialists for a hotel in the US. With existing friendships all around Colombia and Cartagena, and the known process for how to engage the best local workers and bring them into community, negotiating and contracting young, skilled workers to model, promote, work and serve all aspects of the hotel, including attending and organize events at the hotel, can fulfill the sales, service, and management needs of the hotel and its services. With the right leadership, guidelines, and individual dealmaking that meets the needs of each staff member, we can achieve a very low cost operating model.

   In summary, Best Life Beach House can be built or renovated as the destination hotel to resell the experiences and services of the local beach in La Boquilla, under the same roof. To do this, we attract travelers through our English website, phone support, and services, book them in the hotel, partner and package the best beach experiences, and use marketing to dominate the digital and social position for the best beach hotel in La Boquilla and Cartagena, Colombia.

Best Life Beach Hotel will be equipped with a solar power system, Star Link for wifi, and will be promoted through a modern English website, social media, and strategic SEO to target international travelers. Bookings will be managed by English-Speaking staff and automation. Packaged experiences will be sold and handed off to trusted specialists who are trained in the quality experience our customers expect and demand.

We’ll promote attractive staff, community, and events through our social media and website. We’ll resell existing beach experiences without risk of operating cost, aside from the time and attention of our existing staff, who double as our sales team.

Through Best Life Beach House, we’ll make strategic decisions and experiments to vertically integrate the beach services by adding our own equipment and contracting existing specialists to manage them. Through the local community, we'll expand by creating new tourism and experiment with new experiences, events on the beach and at our hotel, and integrated hotel services such as a room, specific for a spa, and other experiences that our travelers demand, such as a language exchange program with trusted specialists.

In turn our multiple revenue model includes nearly 15 sources of income. We are a hotel. We are a tourism agency. We are a custom guide service. We are finders-fee connectors. We are consultants. We develop relationships with our customers to support their vacation, but also advise the next aspects of their travel, selling them experiences across Colombia that support their individualized goals, adventures, and journeys.