Just six months after its launch, Punta Cana-based agency Canelo Tours doubled the number of clients it served each month. For a small local operator, the sudden surge in demand meant rebuilding much of its operation almost overnight.
Founded in May 2025 by digital entrepreneur and marketing professional Elvin Haddad, Canelo Tours was created to offer authentic local experiences in a market dominated by international tour operators.
The company takes travelers beyond Punta Cana’s resort corridors on buggy and four-wheel-drive adventures through local trails and communities. Drawing on Elvin’s years exploring the Dominican Republic by bike and 4x4, each experience offers guests a more personal way to experience the country.
After partnering with GetYourGuide in November 2025, bookings increased so quickly, growing from 2,000 to 4,000 guests per month, that the team expanded its fleet, hired new staff, and restructured its day-to-day operations to keep pace with demand.
We spoke to Elvin about the realities of managing sudden growth, his strategy for competing in a market dominated by larger operators, and how tools like GetYourGuide help bridge that gap.
What was the operational landscape of Canelo Tours at the beginning, and what was your main challenge to scale?
We started in May 2025 by betting heavily on digital channels from day one. I designed our own website and managed our marketing campaigns on Google.
The biggest challenge for local operators in Punta Cana is visibility. Most of the largest tour companies are international brands with far greater recognition, so competing independently requires a huge effort. As a local company, we had to earn travelers' trust from scratch, which is why we invested so heavily in our own digital presence from the very beginning.
Back then, we were already serving around 2,000 clients a month across our website and other OTAs. However, we were still a very small team. We had to manually manage complex processes like vehicle dispatching and booking confirmations.
This manual workload limited how much we could grow. It also put the customer experience at risk. Starting Canelo Tours was my bid for independence, but we knew we needed a partner with global reach. GetYourGuide was exactly that.
What inspired the partnership with GetYourGuide, and how did it impact your booking volume?
Joining GetYourGuide was a purely strategic decision. As a marketer, I saw how much visibility the platform had on Google Ads. I knew that was where the real volume was.
We partnered in November 2025 thanks to their recruitment team, and the impact was immediate. Within a few months, GetYourGuide started bringing in around 2,000 monthly clients on its own.
That single source of bookings doubled our booking volume. It pushed us to reach 4,000 clients per month in total. Today, GetYourGuide represents between 42% - 43% of our total bookings. This is more than double our second-closest competitor.
Today, GetYourGuide represents approximately 42–43% of our total bookings, making it our largest OTA partner. Our business evolved positively thanks to GetYourGuide; they're where the volume comes from in this industry.
Such a massive leap in volume requires a solid structure. What operational changes did you implement to sustain this growth?
GetYourGuide brings us travelers from a broad international market, many with high expectations. This forced us to raise our operational standards every day.
We had to completely restructure our operations and reinvest heavily in infrastructure. We went from operating five buggies to buying 20. We also added 10 four-wheelers and doubled our fleet of trucks and buses. Additionally, we partnered with local suppliers who could meet those standards.
Our operation now includes a dedicated team of 18 professionals supporting areas such as bookings, transportation dispatch, refunds, and reputation management. This includes booking agents, transport dispatchers, refund managers, and reputation specialists.
Our next strategic goal for this year is building our own 24/7 call center with six agents. They will make proactive verification calls two days before the tour. This will eliminate the domino effect that a single delayed passenger causes on our hotel pickup routes.
In your daily management, which specific tools on GetYourGuide were key to optimizing logistics and customer service?
The Pickup Planner feature is, without a doubt, our most valuable tool. Punta Cana features over 200 hotels, and our pickup routes change every single night based on where guests are staying.
Pickup Planner helps us organize and communicate pickup information efficiently, including sending customers their exact pickup times. Our team still handles the operational planning and dispatching behind those routes.
The system automatically emails the exact pickup time to the client. This creates a clear record that drastically reduces friction and missed connections.
Similarly, GetYourGuide's native AI tool for message and review management helps us improve how we communicate with customers. It guides us to soften our tone when handling external incidents.
This technology has helped us manage our online reputation. It helped us reach around 1,100 verified customer reviews on the platform. GetYourGuide's technology gave us greater financial certainty and complete transparency in payments, giving us peace of mind to plan for the long term.
Beyond increasing bookings, how has partnering with GetYourGuide strengthened your business?
The impact goes far beyond the bookings themselves. When potential customers visit our website and see that we're a GetYourGuide supplier, they immediately have more confidence in booking with us. That credibility has strengthened our direct sales as well.
Customer reviews have also become a valuable source of feedback. We don't just look at review scores. We pay close attention to recurring comments and use them to make changes that improve the experience.
Every operational improvement helps us earn better reviews, which in turn brings more bookings. It's a continuous cycle of listening, improving, and growing.
Looking at the future of Canelo Tours, how do you define success moving forward, and what is your advice for other operators?
When people ask what needs to happen in three years to feel successful, my answer is simple: we already feel successful today. Now, we're obsessed with getting the day-to-day right. We focus on protecting our reputation and meeting the platform's high standards.
My advice for other operators is to focus entirely on service quality. Success on GetYourGuide depends heavily on your reputation. Good photos and great copy are important, but flawless ground operations are what actually sustain the business.
Ultimately, this business comes down to perspective. I'll give you an example. Once, two customers got their buggies stuck in the exact same puddle during a buggy tour. One later described it as an unacceptable safety failure. The other called it an unforgettable adventure.
Experiences will always be subjective. What we can control is how we respond through great service, clear communication, and being there for our customers whenever they need us.
Key Takeaways
- Leverage technology to scale logistics: Automating route management via tools like the Pickup Planner saves hours of manual work and prevents errors on the ground.
- Invest in your reputation; your most valuable asset: Sustainable growth on digital marketplaces depends on consistently delivering great service and managing reviews.
- Deliver proactive customer support: Handling higher volumes requires professionalizing customer care. Dedicated teams and proactive calls drastically reduce last-minute cancellation costs.
- Find a partner that can bring demand that outweighs commission: Partnering with a global leader like GetYourGuide gave Canelo Tours visibility on Google that would be difficult to achieve independently.
- Evolve under global standards: Adopting high operational standards helps build a healthier, more predictable business that can compete internationally.
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