Lime Book · Booking and reservations
Lime Book handles reservations for tours, charters, beach clubs, rentals, and stays across St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Take deposits online, hold capacity properly, and deal with people who are in your time zone.
Express is already built and can be live in about a week, on a setup fee plus 5% per booking. Custom is for operations that need their own rules.
Two ways to run it
Express is the system we have already built, configured for you. Custom is a build for operations a packaged product cannot fit.
Ready to go
The system is already built. We configure it for your products, rates, and capacity, and you start taking bookings. Most operators are live inside a week.
Built for your operation
For operations the packaged version cannot fit. Ferries with sailings and manifests, rental fleets with contracts and inspections, or bookings that have to feed dispatch.
The 5% on Express is added at checkout, the same way the platform you are probably using now works. Custom is quoted in writing, with the pricing model set out in the engagement terms. Either way you are dealing with a team on St. Thomas rather than a support queue somewhere else.
What it covers
A charter, a beach club, and a villa all take reservations, and almost nothing else about them is the same. The rules are where the work is.
Timed departures, a hard capacity ceiling, waivers signed before anyone arrives, and a manifest the guide can actually work from at the dock. Weather cancellations handled once rather than by twenty phone calls.
Half day, full day, and private charters priced differently, with deposits taken at booking and the balance on the day. Crew see the passenger list on a phone, and the customer gets a confirmation that tells them where to actually meet the boat.
A fixed daily ceiling, walk-ups and reservations sharing the same count, and staff at the gate who need to confirm payment in about two seconds without asking anyone.
Nightly and weekly rates, seasonal pricing, minimum stays, and deposits. Usually the job is connecting what you already run rather than replacing it.
Before you switch
Including the ones where the honest answer is that what you already have is fine.
Express is the system we have already built. We configure it for your products, rates, capacity rules, and branding, and you are usually taking bookings within a week. There is a one-off setup fee and nothing monthly after that. A 5% booking fee is added at checkout, the same way the platform you are probably using now works.
Custom is for operations the packaged version cannot fit. Ferry schedules with sailings and manifests, rental fleets with contracts and damage records, or bookings that have to hand off to dispatch. That is a build, quoted in writing, with the pricing model agreed as part of the engagement terms.
Most operators start on Express. Some never need anything else.
Mechanically, it is not. Most tour and activity platforms add a booking fee at checkout in the same way, typically around 6%. Ours is 5%.
The difference is who you are dealing with. We are on St. Thomas, in your time zone, and we build the system. When something is wrong on a Saturday morning you are not filing a ticket with a support queue in another country.
And if you outgrow the packaged version, the custom path is priced as a build rather than as a bigger percentage.
Plenty of operators are well served by an off-the-shelf platform, and we will say so if that is you. What they are good at is a straightforward tour or activity sold online.
Where they struggle is anything with an unusual shape. Sailings rather than departures. A fleet with contracts, deposits, and damage records. Capacity shared across several products. Bookings that have to become a dispatch job. Those are the operations that end up running half on the platform and half on a spreadsheet.
Express covers the straightforward case. Custom exists for the rest.
Usually one of five reasons, and rarely price alone:
Yes, and it is usually the first thing operators ask for. A deposit at the time of booking with the balance collected on the day, or in advance, or a full payment for smaller bookings.
The part that matters locally is which processor you use. We build against the processor you already bank with rather than making you switch to something that assumes a mainland merchant account. If you are on Clover, that is straightforward.
Partly, and anyone who promises fully is overselling. Taking a payment needs a connection.
What we can do is design for the reality: pages light enough to load on weak cellular, check-in screens that work on a phone at the dock, manifests that can be pulled up before you leave signal, and nothing that fails badly when a request is slow.
A single booking flow for one product is usually four to eight weeks. Something with capacity rules, deposits, waivers, staff check-in, and reporting is more like two to four months, built in phases so you have something running before the whole thing is finished.
If you have a season opening, say so early. A fixed date is useful because it forces the conversation about what genuinely has to work on day one.
A booking platform with payments, capacity rules, waivers, and staff check-in typically starts around $10,000. Systems with vessel or fleet logic, or that feed dispatch, run higher.
It is quoted in writing after we have watched how you take bookings today, with phases, what each costs, and what is explicitly out of scope. Full ranges are on the FAQ.
Express has a one-off setup fee rather than a build cost. If it fits, it is the cheaper way to start.
Built here
Most reservation platforms are built for somewhere with one island, one ferry-free logistics chain, and mainland payment rails.
Here, a late ferry moves every pickup after it. Guests book from a cruise ship with patchy signal and a fixed window ashore. Concierges book on behalf of guests who then arrive as a different number of people. Hurricane season means bulk cancellations and rebooking that has to be done in an afternoon. And the payment processor you already bank with is the one the system has to use.
None of that is exotic. It is just Tuesday, and it is the difference between software that fits and software you work around.
Lime Book is part of the FruitStack product family. Where an operation needs dispatch, rentals, staff scheduling, or ordering alongside bookings, those connect rather than being bolted on.
Start here
Even if that is a phone, a notebook, and a group chat. Especially if it is. We will tell you honestly whether you need something built or whether a platform will do.
How every engagement runs
Get in touch
Let’s talk about it.
Based in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Working across the USVI, BVI, and the wider Caribbean.