Inside Big Coast: what guests see in their account, and what the captain sees
The trip is booked. The deposit is paid. Now the guest has questions. When is it again? Did the balance go through? Where do we meet?
On a lot of charter sites, every one of those questions is a phone call or an email. On the Big Coast Marine Adventures site, the guest can look it up.
A real charter on Denman Island
Big Coast Marine Adventures is a real business, and a client of ours. Captain Pat runs private fishing charters and sightseeing tours out of Denman Island, in the Northern Gulf Islands of BC. Guests book trips on the Big Coast site today. It is not a made-up demo.
What the guest sees
Guests sign in with their email. They can use a password, or ask for a short code by email and skip the password. Their account opens on a big card at the top: Your Next Trip.
That card shows the trip, a photo of it, and the date with the day of the week. It counts down the days. It shows how much is paid and how much is left, with a bar that fills as they pay.
From that card, the guest can:
- Pay the balance. One button opens a page to pay what is left.
- Add the trip to their calendar. It drops into their phone or computer calendar, set to BC time, with a reminder the day before.
- Share the trip. Handy for a group, so everyone knows the plan.
Below that, trips are sorted into upcoming, past and cancelled. Each trip shows what is paid and what is due. There is also a page to send the captain a message about a booking.
None of this is fancy. It just answers the questions guests ask, before they have to ask.
What the captain sees
Pat has his own admin. It is laid out in tabs. Contacts. Bookings. Orders, with a list of balances coming due soon. Messages from guests. A customer list he can tag and add notes to. Photo albums and videos for the site. A tab to keep the seafood prices page in check.
New bookings and messages show up as alerts on his phone. So he does not have to keep checking.
The pages guests come back to
A few parts of the site are not about booking at all. They are why people return.
- A live marine forecast. The home page shows the next good days on the water, each with its own book button. A forecast is not a promise that a trip will run.
- Live seafood prices. A page of BC seafood prices that update on their own. Each one shows where it came from and how long ago it was updated.
- Local area pages. A page each for places like Hornby Island, Fanny Bay, Baynes Sound and Chrome Island.
The same tools, for your boat
Everything the Big Coast home page shows comes with a Launch of our Fishing Charter starter. That includes guest accounts, the live forecast, the local area pages and live seafood prices. The tools behind the scenes come too. We set it all up with your name, your boat, and your trips.
A Launch is $2,500 CAD plus GST, paid once. You get two hours, live, with one of our people. We test the guest account with one real sign-in. We walk you through your own admin, so you know where every booking and message lands.
We also teach you to change your site by just saying what you want, in plain English. Type "add a page about Lambert Channel" or "put our winter hours on the contact page." On the call you make one real change this way, with us beside you.
Your site runs in your own Replit account. We charge $0 a month. Your host bills about $20 US a month for use. That is the host's bill, in US dollars. Our prices are in Canadian dollars. The code is yours, and you can take a full copy any time.
Take a look
Read about the Fishing Charter starter, or start your Launch. Want to see what yours would look like first? Type your web address on See what you'd get. Or book a free call and tell us about your trips.