“Sometimes you, as a human and travel professional, make mistakes, and those mistakes are money in our field, with Tour Writer; the error margin is minimal.
Mauricio Esquivel
Founder and Costa Rica Travel Specialist, Huellas e-travel
Before Tourwriter
- Hours to build a single seven-day itinerary in Word and PDF, sourcing images manually from hotel websites
- Excel spreadsheets for every quote, copied line by line from hotel rate sheets
- Manual copy-paste pricing with a real margin for human error
- No central place to store or update supplier rates season to season
After Tourwriter
- 15 to 20 minutes to build the same seven-day itinerary
- Four to six itineraries built per day as standard output
- Five images per itinerary day, hand-picked by Mauricio rather than pulled automatically from a supplier website
- Confidence in the numbers, with no recorded pricing errors from the platform
Growth
- Seven years on Tourwriter as of this interview, having adopted the platform in 2019
- A two-person guiding team plus Mauricio running the entire sales, design, and delivery cycle
Efficiency gains
- More than 40 minutes saved on every seven-day itinerary build
- Zero recorded pricing errors across seven years of use
- Five curated images per itinerary, up from two or three previously, without adding design time
Overview and background
When a business owner is also the salesperson and the itinerary designer, every hour spent formatting a document is an hour not spent closing the next booking. That was the arithmetic Mauricio Esquivel faced at Huellas e-travel, the Costa Rica destination management company he founded in San Juan de La Unión, Cartago, in November 2001, after a final assignment on an ecommerce marketing course turned into a business plan.
"Huellas" means "footprints" in Spanish, and the company designs sustainability-driven itineraries across six regions of the country, from the Caribbean coast to the Central Valley.
Mauricio runs the business with two licensed guide-drivers, Danny Ugalde and Fabián Alfaro, and there is no separate quoting team or design department behind him. Every itinerary that leaves Huellas passes through his hands, from selecting the lodges to picking the photographs that sell the trip. He worked jungle lodge and airline jobs alongside the business until 2015, when Huellas had grown enough to become his sole focus, and he found Tourwriter in 2019 after earlier software choices failed to meet his needs.
Before Tourwriter, his setup meant building each itinerary twice. Mauricio quoted in Excel, copying rates from hotel rate sheets line by line, then built a matching document in Word and exported it to PDF for the client.
A seven-day trip took about an hour to put together, and every manual transcription of a rate carried the risk of a mistake that cost real money.
“Sometimes you, as a human and travel professional, make mistakes, and those mistakes are money in our field, with Tourwriter; the error margin is minimal.”
Mauricio Esquivel, Founder and Costa Rica Travel Specialist, Huellas e-travel
The images that went into those early itineraries came from wherever was fastest to hand, usually a hotel or supplier's own website. Mauricio was never fully satisfied with that shortcut, even before he had a better alternative, because a generic supplier photo rarely showed the details that actually sell a room, a restaurant, or a pool. That instinct for presentation, formed under time pressure with Word and PDF, would later shape exactly how he uses Tourwriter's itinerary tools.
The quoting fix that stuck
Mauricio found Tourwriter by accident, years before he became a customer. Working in airline reservations, he received a booking confirmation from a Costa Rican supplier that had been generated by Tourwriter.
"Before I was a Tourwriter customer, I received a booking email generated by the Tourwriter platform. I was impressed so I investigated, and now I am a Tourwriter customer" he says.
That curiosity and appetite to investigate and get on board with the lastest tools led Mauricio to sign up, and Huellas has now run on Tourwriter for seven years.
Tourwriter was founded in New Zealand in 2004, and every one of the more than 20 years since has been shaped by direct feedback from boutique tour operators building itineraries much like Mauricio's. The itinerary builder replaced the Word-and-PDF workflow directly. Content blocks for accommodation, activities, and transfers can be assembled and reused, which is why a seven-day itinerary now takes Mauricio 15 to 20 minutes rather than over an hour. On a normal day he builds four to six of them.
The quoting side changed even more. Tourwriter's pricing and margin tools replaced the Excel sheets Mauricio used to rebuild from scratch for every trip.
"I really enjoy the quoting section. It's so quick, you know, it's amazing."
Asked whether he still sees pricing mistakes the way he used to with spreadsheets, his answer was direct.
“Across the many years I have been using Tourwriter I have not had a single time where the platform has done something wrong on the numbers. No, no, no, not at all.”
Mauricio Esquivel, Founder and Costa Rica Travel Specialist, Huellas e-travel
That reliability changed how Mauricio works day to day. He no longer checks every line of every quote before sending it.
"I now have the confidence that the numbers are okay."
Mauricio Esquivel, Founder and Costa Rica Travel Specialist, Huellas e-travel
Images matter just as much as pricing to how Huellas sells a trip. Mauricio deliberately avoids pulling pictures automatically from supplier websites, a shortcut he has seen other software offer.
“I choose my images and my text carefully. When you really choose your pictures carefully, and write your own descriptions rather than just uploading something awkward that maybe doesn't talk about the room, the restaurant, the pool, it makes a big difference... An image is worth a thousand words.”
Mauricio Esquivel, Founder and Costa Rica Travel Specialist, Huellas e-travel
Each itinerary now carries five curated images, up from two or three in earlier years.
Mass-market AI trip planners and OTA recommendation engines are getting faster at stitching together generic itineraries, but they cannot replicate the depth of a founder who has personally scouted every lodge, guide, and viewpoint on his own itineraries. Purpose-built software like Tourwriter lets an operator such as Mauricio move at the same speed as those tools while keeping the personalisation and local knowledge that a generic algorithm cannot offer.
Mauricio also raises feature ideas through Canny, Tourwriter's feature request tool, directly contributing to the roadmap and future of the product.
He also passes suggestions directly to Sarah, his Customer Success Executive at Tourwriter.
The results
Seven years in, the biggest impact for Huellas has been getting back more time. Over an hour per itinerary has become 15 to 20 minutes. Across four to six itineraries this gives Mauricio hours back in his day, every single day. He spends these selling and managing the business rather than formatting documents. For an operator who is also the entire sales team, that time has a direct line to revenue.
The second result is confidence in the numbers. Manual quoting in Excel carried a margin for error that Mauricio describes as inherent to doing the work by hand. Seven years on Tourwriter, he reports no instances of the platform producing an incorrect calculation, which means the checking work that used to protect against transcription mistakes has largely disappeared from his routine.
Mauricio has also become an active referrer of Tourwriter, proudly recommending the platform to his industry peers and colleagues. Mauricio displays the Tourwriter logo on his own website and on the work shirt he wears to travel fairs and agent meetings, unprompted by any partner programme. This passion comes from seven years of a working relationship he trusts enough to put his name behind in public.
This collaborative and supportive approach to operations at Huellas extends through everything they do. The company offsets the CO2 emissions of every trip it sells by supporting FONAFIFO (Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal), a Costa Rican public institution that funds the forestry sector and manages the Payment for Environmental Services (PSA) programs.
Mauricio appreciates the support Tourwriter extended during Covid-19 and views the relationship as a true partnership, not just a vendor relationship.
"Tourwriter really are hearing the tour operators. They bring the travel agents in to the picture when developing the platform, and that's a nice thing. It sets Tourwriter apart. Many companies, they don't care. They just want to sell, they say this is my software, this is it."
What clients say
“We brought our daughter's family, including 2 boys of 12 and 10. We spent 10 days, staying in San José, Tortuguero, Sarapiquí, and Tamarindo. Mauricio provided us with superb guides, the vans were never late, and our rooms were just as we wished. I was so happy to find Costa Rica looking beautiful, safe, and friendly. Thank you, Huellas!”
Customer Website
“Mauricio, the caring leader of Huellas, provided us a customized experience geared specifically to our requests. Jorge Rojas was our tour guide for the entire visit and he was such a knowledgeable and pleasant bilingual professional that made our entire stay not just enjoyable, but totally worry free. Well done, Mauricio!”
Customer Website
How did Huellas e-travel manage quoting before using dedicated itinerary software?
Mauricio Esquivel built every quote manually in Excel, copying rates line by line from hotel rate sheets. Itineraries were then built separately in Word and exported to PDF, meaning the same trip was assembled twice. A single seven-day itinerary took around an hour to complete this way.
What problems do solo tour operators face when quoting manually?
Manual quoting means retyping supplier rates into a spreadsheet for every trip, with no central record to check against. Mauricio describes the risk plainly: mistakes made by hand cost real money. Rebuilding the same content in a separate itinerary document doubles the workload again.
Why do small DMCs struggle to keep supplier rates up to date?
When one person handles sales, design, and pricing, rate updates compete with client-facing work for time. Loading a full year of seasonal rates one date range at a time, as Mauricio still does, is the kind of repetitive task that gets deprioritised even though it directly affects quote accuracy.
How does Tourwriter handle itinerary building for a small operator?
Tourwriter's itinerary builder assembles day-by-day content from a reusable database of accommodation, activities, and transfers. Mauricio now builds a seven-day itinerary in 15 to 20 minutes, down from an hour, and produces four to six itineraries on a typical day.
Can Tourwriter itineraries use an operator's own photography instead of stock supplier images?
Yes. Mauricio deliberately selects and uploads his own images rather than pulling them automatically from supplier websites, which he has seen other platforms default to. Each itinerary carries five hand-picked images, which he considers essential to selling a trip well.
What does onboarding look like for a small, owner-run tour operator?
Huellas e-travel is run by one founder and two guide-drivers, with Mauricio handling sales, design, and pricing personally. Tourwriter's own team supported Huellas through its early months without a client base, which Mauricio credits with helping the relationship take hold before results were even visible.
Does Tourwriter integrate with payment platforms outside Stripe?
Stripe is Tourwriter's native payment integration, but not every operator can use it. Huellas e-travel cannot access Stripe due to Costa Rican banking regulations and instead processes payments through WeTravel. Tourwriter has flagged a future Flywire integration as a possible additional option.
How much time can a tour operator save by automating itinerary building?
Huellas e-travel cut itinerary build time from roughly an hour to 15 to 20 minutes per seven-day trip. Building four to six itineraries a day, that difference recovers well over an hour of Mauricio's working day that now goes into client conversations and sales rather than document formatting.
What results have small, founder-led DMCs achieved with itinerary management software?
Over seven years on Tourwriter, Huellas e-travel has seen no recorded pricing errors from the platform, a marked change from the manual mistake margin of Excel-based quoting. Itinerary build time has fallen by roughly two-thirds, and the founder now refers other Costa Rican operators to the platform.
How has Huellas e-travel changed since implementing Tourwriter?
Mauricio Esquivel has gone from spending an hour per itinerary and manually checking quotes for errors to building several itineraries a day with confidence in the numbers. He has also become an informal advocate for Tourwriter within Costa Rica's tour operator community.
What should a tour operator ask before switching itinerary software?
Based on Huellas e-travel's experience, worth asking: does the platform support the payment processors available in your country, can rate updates be made in bulk across multiple date ranges, and does the vendor provide meaningful support during the early, low-volume months of onboarding.
Huellas e-travel
A Costa Rican destination management company founded in San Juan de la Unión, Cartago, in November 2001. Huellas designs sustainability-driven itineraries across six regions of Costa Rica and offsets the CO2 emissions of every trip it sells.
Mauricio Esquivel
Mauricio founded Huellas e-travel in 2001 and has run its sales, design, and pricing personally ever since, alongside two licensed guide-drivers.
“Last but not least, I have been using Tourwriter for 7 years now!”
