The Hoyo sales playbook. What the product does in plain language, how to walk a lodge owner through it, draft pricing in Meticais, and the first-call script. Built in Vilankulo. Sold lodge by lodge.
Open with one of these. They're the answer to "but why should I switch?" — short enough to say in a doorway, true enough to defend over coffee.
Hoyo was built in Vilankulo, not Cape Town or London. Every feature exists because Angela asked for it after a real Friday-night problem at VBL. The product knows what Mozambican hospitality actually feels like.
No foreign PMS files Município, Migração, IRPS payroll or pulls daily FX from Banco de Moçambique. We do all four — natively, monthly, on time. That's the only compliance suite of its kind on the market.
2,871 VBL bookings and 146 BIA bookings already running through Hoyo in production. Not a pilot. Not a demo. Real reservations, real invoices, real guests checking in. Zero outages since launch.
Most lodge owners run on a combination of FreeToBook, paper ledgers, and one overworked GM who keeps it all in their head. Hoyo collapses that into one workflow.
/scheduleOn 8 May you walked Jarryd through how a lodge actually runs. This is that list, in your words, with the build status. Use it as your demo running-order — every item maps to a real screen you can show.
| # | Feature | What Angela said it meant | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Passport + visa on the booking | "We need to ask for it anyway for Migração — let's stop chasing guests twice." | Live |
| 02 | "Dear Guest" default greeting | "When the booker isn't the guest, don't start the email with the wrong name." | Live |
| 03 | Daily reception print-out | "Melinda spends an hour every morning rebuilding this in Excel." | Live · /schedule |
| 04 | Banco de Moçambique FX feed | "I need the official rate on the day of the invoice, not what Google gave me last week." | Live · daily |
| 05 | Scheduled email templates | "Pre-arrival info shouldn't depend on Melinda remembering to send it on a Tuesday." | Live · 12 templates |
| 06 | Guest inbox / threaded messaging | "Replies should land back in the booking, not in someone's Gmail." | Live · per booking |
| 07 | Migração form auto-fill | "Four days of typing names into the SEF form. Should be four minutes." | Live · /reports/immigration |
| 08 | Município tourism-tax form | "Same thing, different government office." | Live · /reports/tax |
| 09 | Passport OCR | "I shouldn't have to read the date of birth off a photo of a Russian passport." | Live |
| 10 | Digital check-in (EN + PT) | "The Brazilian family won't fill in an English form. The English family won't fill in a Portuguese one." | Live · /check-in |
| 11 | Per-room QR guides | "Every room should have one. Wi-Fi password, menus, what's open today — phone in their hand." | Live · 23 rooms |
| 12 | Single source of truth → website | "If I change a rate in admin, the website shouldn't be a week behind." | Live · shared DB |
| 13 | Bundled website upsell | "Some lodges still don't have a real website." | Deferred · commercial |
| 14 | Hoyo-branded outbound email | "Right now invoices say noreply@resend.dev. That has to go." | Prepped · 1 DNS click |
| 15 | Returning-guest detection | "If the Smiths come back, the system should know." | Live · /guests |
| 16 | HR module (fingerprint → payroll) | "Eligio clocks in. The number goes into payroll. Stop doing it on paper." | Live · ZKTeco CSV |
When a lodge owner says "what does it actually do?" — this is the table. Pick three rows that match their pain. Show them the screen.
Most PMS demos focus on the GM. Lodge owners are buying for three roles at once — and they'll only sign if the value lands for each. Use these narratives as your demo flow.
/schedule, prints today's prep. Knows who arrives, who departs, who needs breakfast.This is the part no other PMS in Mozambique can do — and the easiest one to demo. Tell it as Marina's story.
Marina (BIA) books a boat for a guest staying at VBL. It appears on Melinda's morning prep automatically, in milliseconds, across two separate businesses on the same platform. No phone call. No WhatsApp screenshot. No "I'll text you when I know." No other PMS in Mozambique does this.
How to pitch it: "Tomorrow Marina will book a boat for one of your guests. You'll know about it before she calls. That's worth your subscription on its own."
Mews won't do these. FreeToBook won't do these. Nightsbridge does some for South Africa, none for Mozambique. This section is your moat.
Auto-collated by guest, by night, by IVA-inclusive total. Exports to XLSX in the format the Município office accepts. The 4-day paper-trail rebuild becomes 4 minutes.
/reports/tax
Every arriving guest's passport, nationality, dates and check-in source pre-filled into the SEF format. Monthly XLSX export. Passport OCR captures the data so reception doesn't have to re-type it.
/reports/immigration
IRPS bracket, INSS contribution, gross-to-net, payslip lines — all per cycle. ZKTeco fingerprint clock CSV imports straight in. Eligio's shift becomes a payroll line.
/staff/payroll
Daily FX feed wired into every invoice that bills in MZN, USD, EUR or ZAR. Footer on tax exports prompts a Boletim Diário cross-check before filing.
daily · 4 currencies
Guest gets a link the day before arrival. Fills passport, address, signature in their language. Lands directly on the booking. No paper. No "please print this and bring it."
/check-in/[token]
Every room gets a printable QR sheet. Scan → bilingual room guide, today's restaurant menu, what's open, how to ask for a transfer. One A4 sheet per unit.
/rooms/qr-sheet
Below is a starting point. The actual number Hoyo charges will move as Angela starts hearing real willingness-to-pay from lodge owners and as Jarryd gets a feel for cost-to-serve. Do not commit a prospect to a specific number without Jarryd's confirmation.
Pilot @ 2,000 MZN. We need 5 reference customers we can name. The marginal cost of tenant N is ~$0 (same code, same database, one DNS record). At 2,000 MZN/mo a small lodge will not flinch — it's less than what they pay one waiter per week. The 12-month lock-in means we can quote them as case studies for the standard tier.
Standard @ 8,000 MZN. Anchored to FreeToBook's ~£40 (~USD 50) but priced higher because Hoyo also replaces the spa diary, the activities book, the agency CRM, the Município paperwork, and the HR system. A mid-tier MZ lodge spends 5–8 hours a month on those — we're charging for time saved, not seats.
Activity Operator @ 4,000 MZN. Lower than a lodge because operators have lower revenue per month — but the same engineering value. We win here on the cross-tenant mirror that nobody else can offer.
Network bundle @ 10,000 MZN. Lodge (8k) + Operator (4k) would be 12k separately — we discount to 10k because once both sides of a town are on Hoyo, the network effect accelerates: every new partner lodge for Marina, every new boat operator for Angela. We want this number to be obviously the best deal.
Channel manager (+3,000 MZN). Add-on when Channex goes live (gated on the Hoyo entity being incorporated and the partner agreement signed — be honest about that timing with prospects). For lodges running on Booking.com / Expedia / Airbnb, this is the bridge.
What we still need to know: Mozambican lodge owners' actual price sensitivity in MZN. Angela's job in the first 3 calls is to find the price at which they say "yes, that's fair" — not the price at which they say "I'll think about it".
Most Mozambican lodge owners will not respond to cold email. They will respond to Angela walking into reception with a tablet showing VBL's admin. Sell to the cluster you live in.
Concentrated, well-trafficked, English- and Portuguese-speaking, and full of properties Angela already knows by face. The flywheel: once two lodges in a town are on Hoyo, the third is much easier — the network effect means new partners light up automatically.
Write a list of 5 specific lodges with named contacts. Order by relationship strength, not size. Send it to Jarryd by next week so we can prep tailored demo accounts.
Channel · in-person tour of VBL admin → 30-min demo on their site → 14-day free trial → WhatsApp follow-ups.
Memorise the shape, not the words. The Portuguese lines are starting points — make them yours.
Don't open with what Hoyo is. Open with a problem you both know.
Listen for the answer. The price you quote later depends on what they say.
Open vbl.hoyo.co.za/schedule on your phone. This is the one screen that lands for every lodge owner — it's the morning Excel they recognise.
Click /reports/tax. Show the month, the totals, the XLSX download. Don't say a word — let them count the seconds.
Open /agencies. Show the 1,914 enriched agencies. Filter by tier. Send a sample newsletter to the 30%-commission group.
Don't just show the network diagram — tell it as a moment that happened. The lodge owner has to imagine it on their floor.
Lodge owners trust someone who says "we don't do that yet" before someone who promises everything.
Lead with the lowest tier. Don't over-explain. Watch their face.
Don't ask for a signature. Ask for next Tuesday.
Don't wait. Three lines, including a screenshot from the demo, before 19:00.
Some of this exists. Some doesn't. The honest list, so Angela never overpromises.
Drop into a chat. Replace the brackets. The Portuguese is starting-point Angela should tighten.
Olá [Nome], é a Angela do Vilanculos Beach Lodge. Estou a trabalhar num novo sistema — Hoyo — que faz tudo o que o FreeToBook faz, mais o Município, Migração e folha de salários. Construído aqui em Vilanculos. Posso passar 30 minutos contigo na próxima semana? Mostro como já funciona no VBL. Angela
Boa noite [Nome] — obrigada pelo tempo hoje. Link para o admin do VBL: vbl.hoyo.co.za Link para a apresentação: sales.hoyo.co.za Para os primeiros 5 lodges: 2.000 MT/mês, 12 meses, sem instalação. Posso começar contigo segunda-feira? Angela
Olá [Nome], rapidamente — Imagina que a Marina (BIA) reserva um barco para um dos teus hóspedes. O pequeno-almoço de amanhã ajusta-se automaticamente. Sem chamadas, sem WhatsApp. É isto que o Hoyo faz e nenhum outro sistema faz. Que dia da próxima semana funciona? Angela
We won't get any of these right by guessing. Angela's lived knowledge is the unfair advantage.
Order by relationship strength, not by lodge size. We need 5 names, 5 contacts, and 1 line each on why they'd say yes. Send to Jarryd by end of next week so we can prep tailored demo accounts.
The MZN numbers in §07 are draft. In your first 3 conversations — not pitches, conversations — ask what a lodge currently spends on FreeToBook + accountant time + the agency CRM tool they don't have. We'll re-set the standard tier from that number, not from ours.
Three models are on the table: (a) % of MRR for every signed lodge in your first year — clean and incentive-aligned but rewards short-term thinking; (b) flat monthly retainer for your time — predictable but caps your upside; (c) equity-only at your co-founder rate — full alignment but no near-term cash. We need to pick one before pitch #1.