Three options, your brand, one link
Why quoting with alternatives tends to get a faster yes than a single quote, and how to build three options that help people decide instead of confusing them.
Ana Gómez messaged you about Patagonia for 2. You’ve talked a little. You know it’s an anniversary, that they love walking but don’t want anything extreme, and that the budget she gave you is a round number that probably has some room in it.
Now you have to send her something. The habit is to put together the best quote you can think of, export it to PDF and send it over WhatsApp. This post suggests something else: send her three options together, on one link.
Comparing is easier than deciding
When you send someone a single quote, you’re asking a yes-or-no question. Do you want this trip, at this price? That question is uncomfortable. To answer it, the person has to imagine everything you didn’t show them. Is there something cheaper? Am I overpaying? What if I look on my own? The easiest response to that discomfort is not to answer yet. “Let me talk it over and get back to you.”
When you send three options, the question changes. It’s no longer “yes or no?” but “which one?”. Comparing is something we do all the time, without effort. Looking at two hotels side by side and picking the one we like is much easier than judging one hotel alone, in a vacuum. The other options give the price context. If Ana sees a more affordable option and a more ambitious one, the middle one stops being “expensive” or “cheap” and becomes the one that makes sense for her.
You’re also showing her that you thought about it. Three well-built options say “I understood what you want, and here are the possible paths”. A single one says “this is what there is”. The first is what you expect from an expert.
One link instead of versioned PDFs
Options work badly in PDF. If they’re three files, Ana opens them separately, compares them from memory and asks about things that were in the other one. If it’s one long PDF with all three, it reads poorly on a phone. And when she asks for a change, the dance begins: quote_v2.pdf, quote_v3_FINAL.pdf, and the question of which one is the real one.
A link fixes that. The three options sit on the same page, side by side. If you change a price, it changes in the same place, and Ana always sees the current version. No file gets lost in the chat, and no attachment is too heavy to open.
How it looks matters too. That link carries your logo and your name, and if you like, your own domain. Ana isn’t looking at a generic template. She’s looking at a proposal from Andes & Mar Viajes. It’s your agency, presenting itself as a serious, modern agency that holds its own next to any big platform.
Choosing and paying in the same place
The most fragile moment in a sale is the one between “I like this one” and the payment. With a PDF, that moment has many steps. Ana tells you which one she picked, you send her the bank details, she makes the transfer, sends you the receipt, you look for it in your bank app. At any of those steps, things can cool off.
If the proposal has a button to choose and pay, those steps disappear. Ana picks the option she likes and pays online, with Stripe or Mercado Pago, right there. You see the payment recorded without asking for a receipt. When the path between deciding and acting is short, the decision gets made. Sometimes Ana says yes before you finish your coffee.
How to build three good options
Three poorly thought-out options confuse more than one. A few guidelines help.
A clear default. The one you’d recommend if Ana asked “what would you do?”. For her, it would be Glaciers, US$4,180: El Calafate and Perito Moreno, a good hotel, the tours that make the trip worth it. Put it first and say it’s your recommendation.
A cheaper one that’s still safe. Not the poor version of the main one. A complete trip that costs less because it gives up reasonable things. Classic, US$3,420: same destination, a simpler hotel, fewer paid tours. If Ana’s real budget was tighter than she said, this option lets her say yes without having to admit it.
An aspirational one. The one that makes people dream. Fitz Roy trek, US$6,900: adding El Chaltén, guided hikes, a special hotel for the anniversary. She may not pick it. Sometimes she will, and even when she doesn’t, it shows the main option for what it is, a very good choice.
And two rules for all three. First, same dates and same number of travelers. If everything changes at once, nothing can be compared. Second, explain the differences in plain words. Ana shouldn’t have to read three full itineraries to find what changes. One line per option is enough. “This one adds two nights in El Chaltén and guided hikes.” “This one uses a simpler hotel and leaves the second day free.”
More than three options rarely helps. Past a certain point, choosing becomes work, and the person goes back to putting it off.
How Vuela does it
In Vuela, an opportunity can have several proposals, and they all appear together on the same share link, with your logo and your domain. Only you see your margin and your costs. The traveler compares, chooses and pays online from that same link, and the payment shows up recorded on the opportunity. If you’d like to send your next quote this way, you have 14 days free, no card, from the pricing page.