ʻUpena Strategy
Services · Priced plainly

One process. Two ways to pay.

Strategy and media, nothing else — we do not produce content, and we never will. Every engagement runs the same four steps, on the same clock, and you choose a flat retainer or performance pricing at the end of the build. Both are below.

The process at a glance

Four steps, one clock.

01 · Audit
Days 0–5 · Free

Twelve months of payout statements in, one page back: your real effective rate and the fixes ranked by return. If the numbers say stop here, we say so in writing.

02 · Build
Days 7–45 · $4,000–$8,000 one-time

The Direct Booking Engine: funnel, tracking, SEO foundation, Google Business Profile. Built once, owned by you.

03 · Grow
Day 30 onward · from $1,500/mo

Campaigns run against booking revenue, starting with defending your own name. Retainer or performance pricing.

04 · Review
Every 90 days · included

One page of numbers: direct share, cost per direct booking, commission avoided. Keep, change tier, or stop — 30 days notice, always.

The first 90 days

What happens when.

Dates are commitments, not estimates. If a milestone slips on our side, you hear it before the day arrives, with the new date.

Day 0
Statements in
You send twelve months of payout data. Export takes about five minutes per platform.
Day 5
Audit back, go / no-go
One page: real effective rate, the dollar total, three fixes ranked by return — and whether a paid engagement is justified at all.
Day 7
Build kickoff
Scope fixed in writing against the audit. One point of contact. No content production, ever.
Day 14
Tracking live
GA4 wired to your booking engine — direct finally separated from OTA. Your baseline starts recording here, which is what performance pricing is later measured against.
Day 30
Brand defense live · GBP shipped
Your name stops being platform inventory. Business Profile rebuilt: categories, services, review engine. Growth campaigns can start here.
Day 45
Engine launches
Funnel live and load-tested on a phone: four taps to a confirmed booking. The second door is open.
Day 60
First scoreboard
First full month of clean numbers: direct share, cost per direct booking, commission avoided.
Day 90
First quarterly review
The numbers decide what continues: keep the tier, change it, move to performance pricing, or stop. 30-day out, month-to-month from here.
Step 02, in depth · The build

Direct Booking Engine

$4,000 – $8,000 · ONE-TIME · DAYS 7–45

The second door, built once: everything an operator needs to take bookings that pay no commission. Priced by scope after the audit — number of products, islands and platforms — and fixed in writing before day 7.

01
Booking Funnel & Conversion
The path from first tap to confirmed booking, rebuilt for a guest deciding on a phone two days out.
02
SEO Direction
Keyword strategy, site architecture and a prioritized technical fix list for your island and products.
03
Booking Analytics & Attribution
GA4 and Tag Manager tied to FareHarbor, Peek, Rezdy, Checkfront, Xola or Bókun — direct finally separated from OTA.
04
Google Business Profile
Built out completely: categories, services, Q&A, photos, review engine.
Step 03, in depth · Two ways to pay

Flat retainer, or performance.

Both start after the build, both are month-to-month after the first term, both come with the quarterly scoreboard. The difference is who carries the risk — and what it costs when things go well.

Google Ads Management

FROM $1,500/MO · 90-DAY INITIAL TERM

Search run against booking revenue, starting with brand defense. Ad accounts stay in your name, billed to you. We never mark up media.

Search + Paid Social

FROM $2,500/MO · 90-DAY INITIAL TERM

Meta plus one additional platform, managed against confirmed bookings — built for the guest on vacation, deciding tonight.

Full Channel Program

FROM $3,000/MO · 90-DAY INITIAL TERM

Everything above plus hotel front desks and activity desks across Oʻahu, built in person: target lists, materials, commission design, performance tracking.

The performance option · For larger operators

Pay like a commission. A much smaller one, only on growth.

$1,500/mo base + 10% of new direct booking revenue above your audited baseline — total never exceeding 15% of that growth. You already think in commission; this one is a third of the platforms' effective rate, applies only to direct revenue we created, and is measured by the attribution stack the build installed, trued up quarterly against your booking engine's own numbers.

Fits operators around $1M+ with 50%+ of bookings on platforms
Baseline = your audited direct revenue before we start; you never pay on what was already yours
Six-month initial term — attribution needs a season — then month-to-month
If direct revenue doesn't grow, you pay the base and nothing else
Accounts and data stay yours, forever
Media billed to your card — never marked up, never resold
Month-to-month after the initial term · 30-day out
Quarterly review decides everything, in numbers
The money math

The ads and the fee come out of recovered commission.

A worked example — $1M operator, 60% of bookings through platforms at a 25% contract, which resolves to about 31% effective. Move a fifth of total bookings direct and the money that stops going to platforms funds everything, with margin left over.

Year one · $200K of bookings moved direct
$62,800 of commission stops leaving
ADS & TOOLS
ʻUPENA
YOU KEEP
Ads, software & processing · $18,000
Our retainer, 12 months · $18,000
Back in your pocket · $26,800

Plus the one-time $4–8K build, which pays back once from the same column — and none of this counts the growth the campaigns add on top, which is where the case studies come from. Recovered commission recurs every year; the build cost doesn't.

Platforms price in percent. We price in dollars.

At a 60/40 split and 31% effective, the platforms' take is locked at roughly 19% of everything you gross — forever, growing with every price increase. The direct channel's all-in cost falls as you grow, because our fee doesn't scale with your revenue. The bigger the operation, the more lopsided this table gets.

Gross bookingsPlatforms keep / yrDirect channel, all-in
$500K$94,000 18.8%~$27,000 5.4%
$1M$188,000 18.8%~$36,000 3.6%
$2M$377,000 18.8%~$54,000 2.7%
$4M$754,000 18.8%~$90,000 2.3%

Platform column: 60% OTA share × ~31% effective rate. Direct column: ads scaling with volume + software, processing and our fee — estimates, shown so you can argue with them. Your audit replaces every one with your actual figures.

Not sure where you land?

The calculator will tell you.

Three sliders, no email required. It estimates your commission, what direct is worth, where the recovered money goes — and which of these engagements the numbers actually justify, including “none yet.”

Charter in Kāneʻohe Bay