The Story
Wilson & Liz have a family-run hotel in their 7-bedroom Italian villa 5 minutes from El Rodadero Beach in Santa Marta, Colombia.
They moved from Sagamosa in the Colombian highlands of Boyaca because they love the beach and living in an environment with a tropical climate rather than the constant rain in the mountains.
They love Santa Marta and they are passionate about this place and so they have opened their home to tourists, long-term travellers and digital nomads.
You can read on to learn more in this tourism marketing case study about their business growth in 2026.
Problem
During peak holiday times in Colombia in December – April and on the weekends they have high occupancy but during the weekdays and rainy green season, their occupancy plummets to around 20%.
Also, selling through AirBNB and Booking.com, they have to pay huge commissions in the neighbourhood of 15-30% to these marketplaces to rank and get bookings. Additionally, these platforms drive short bookings of 2-3 day generally that require a lot of cleaning with the high turnover.
Solution
Build a coliving space for digital nomads who want to live in community with weekly events, outdoor activities, collaborative workspace and communal meals together.
Sell monthly packages instead of by the night so they spend less time cleaning the rooms and more time entertaining and enjoying the company of the guests.
We built a content marketing strategy with content targeting the searches of digital nomad, location independent professionals and nomadic entrepreneurs. We created a lot of blog content that ranks highly on Google and gets my mentioned in authoritative way on ChatGPT, Claude and other LLMs.
With a strong website and content strategy, we began running Google Ads targeting digital nomads in Colombia or planning to visit the tropical nation selling the unique tropical lifestyle here with both great beaches near Santa Marta and the world’s tallest coastal mountain range the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Result
They now get bookings from digital nomads from all over the world we generally want to stay for 1-3 months. If they want to stay longer and rent a house, beachfront apartment or buy real estate Wilson can help them with that because is a trustworthy person to deal with in a country that has challenges with ripoffs, poor ethics and corruption.
Their business has grown and now they are looking at renting more Italian villas on their street and expanding their operations. They have more free time to spend with guests and because they are so kind, generous and friendly they get lots of good referrals and reviews.
Their Google Business Profile has over 20 5-star reviews and now they are ranking on Google and LLMs for direct bookings rather than having to pay steep commissions to OTAs. Additionally, they now make more money per room than before because their occupancy is no longer a problem.
For the first time, they look forward to the rainy green season knowing that they don’t have to struggle to survive in the slow 6 months because they have consistent guests who stay each month and often extend their stay because they like it so much.
My Background Story With This Project
Hey, I’m Kyle Pearce , founder of Social Creators. I hosted a retreat in El Rodadero Beach in Santa Marta last year and I fell in love with the place.
I ended up staying for months with Wilson and Liz at their AirBNB and getting to know them well. I had never experienced such great hospitality and generosity in an AirBNB before.
One night over conversation, I mentioned that I always dreamed of opening a coliving space for digital nomad entrepreneurs and Wilson loved the idea and we decided to just do it.
Using his Italian villa near the beach, we rebranded it as a coliving space, added comfortable workspaces in each room and began promoting it to using targeted content on the blog, YouTube Ads showcasing the natural beauty of the area and Google Ads targeting nomadic entrepreneurs and freelancers.
It has been a lot of fun and rapid learning building the coliving community but it’s not without it’s challenges! Fortunately, Wilson is experienced in both hosting people and navigating the challenges of running a business in Colombia.
For example, the first week of February in the middle of the normally dry season, there was a massive tropical storm that caused a landslide two block away that buried the neighborhood in more than a foot of thick mud. It took a full day of shovelling to remove all the mud just so people and cars could access the villa.
The list goes, as running a business in Colombia, especially under the current socialist regime is a challenge.
Here’s what I learned building Santa Marta Life Coliving:
- Social isolation as a digital nomad is real. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world and still feel completely disconnected.
- Coworking spaces don’t solve it. You’re still going home alone and mostly having surface-level conversations with people at arm’s length.
- Living in the same space is a different animal, you’re making meals together, hanging out in the evening, having real conversations and making real friends
- For creative, entrepreneurial people like me who don’t really fit into normal structures, coliving with other entrepreneurs has been great to be around likeminded people
- We should be building coliving spaces and community instead of wasteful single family mansions
- The most powerful things in the world is community. It’s not easy to build a community in a new country but when you have a mission it’s easy to connect with people.
- Hosting group events like volleyball, photo walks, hikes and workshops has been great for making things fun and helping people collaborate and get to know each other better
I built this coliving as an experiment to help Wilson but I quickly realized there is a lot of demand for this kind of thing.
We’re in the process of expanding and getting more Italian villas on the same street but I don’t want to lose the magic as we grow.
I will update this project as it evolves in the next few months.
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