Case study · Venture · Victoria and Bali

RealDays, a booking platform for owner-run experiences

How one booking engine for a horse rescue in Bali became a platform built to set small experience businesses up for the future.

Visit getrealdays.com (opens in a new tab)

The customer: Small, owner-run experience businesses, and the people who book them
Team: Founder. I run it end to end: research, design, build, payments and sales
Skills: Venture building
Discovery
Product design (end-to-end)
Payments
Built with AI

RealDays homepage: Something you’ll actually remember doing, with a search for what, where and who

The problem

The people who run small experience businesses spend their days answering enquiries instead of running the experience. The big platforms that could bring them customers take 20 to 25% of every booking.

My process

01Started with one owner. Simone runs Salty Cowboy, a horse rescue in Bali, and had no time to train her horses because of enquiries and admin. I designed and built her a booking engine that only offers riders the rides that fit them.
02Went to the businesses directly. In Bali I jumped on my motorbike and visited adventure and maker businesses in person. In Victoria I cold called them. I wanted to know whether Simone’s problem was everyone’s.
03Tested what owners already use. A WhatsApp booking agent at a Bali freediving school took me to payment in eight minutes without one medical question. Chat can gather details, but the booking itself has to hold the checks.
04Built payments around the owner’s yes. Through Stripe, the customer’s card is held, not charged, until the business confirms. Deposits, balances and refunds run through the same flow, and the money goes straight to the business.
05Arranged every listing for AI search as well as for people, so the details customers ask about are structured for the LLM tools that now answer “what should we do this weekend?”

The pivot

I started out selling the booking engine as software, for a setup fee and a monthly subscription. The owners I met didn’t want another tool to run. So I turned it into RealDays: a booking site customers browse, where a business pays nothing a month and only pays when RealDays brings them a booking.

The first month is free. After that it’s 12% of each booking made through RealDays, with GST and card fees included, against 20 to 25% on the big platforms. Bookings a business takes itself cost nothing.

Where it’s going

My ambition is to set small businesses up for the future: easy to find in AI search, paid on time, and free to spend their days on the experience itself.

Next is using AI where small owners lose the most time: pricing, and the operations around every booking. RealDays is an early-stage start-up, and I’m onboarding businesses one call at a time.

Inside the work

The customer picks a date and sends a request. Their card is held, not charged.
The business accepts or declines within 24 hours.
Accepted: the card is charged and the money goes straight to the business.
Declined or no reply: the hold is released and the customer pays nothing.

How a booking works.

How did RealDays begin: Simone, Salty Cowboy’s owner, and Ro on a motorbike in Bali — Where it began: Simone and me, and the motorbike I did my research on.

Three steps for businesses: customer books, you confirm, funds come straight into your account — How it works for a business, in three steps.

Pricing: first month free, then 12% including card fees, compared with Airbnb Experiences, GetYourGuide and Viator — Pricing that only earns when it brings a booking.

What I learned

Owners don’t want more software. They want fewer messages. So everything RealDays asks of a business fits inside a yes or a no.