WebSpain Clients - Spain - Nancy Frey - On Foot In Spain

Jose and I started On Foot in Spain Walking & Hiking Educational Adventures in 1999. Our backgrounds are very different but fate often works strange twists into our lives to create unusual encounters and unions.
Back in 1994 he, a disenchanted lawyer from Santiago de Compostela, found himself walking 700K across the across northern Spain following the medieval pilgrimage trail, the Camino de Santiago.

On his first day he had the luck of finding me – an American anthropologist doing research on the contemporary resurgence of this pilgrimage. I was trying to find out why people from all over the world, who were not necessarily religious, walkers or masochists, were undertaking this oftentimes arduous, though unquestionably magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime journey.

Jose and I kept in contact after he finished his pilgrimage and after I finished my dissertation which became the book Pilgrim Stories. On and Off the Road to Santiago (UC Press, 1998). As our paths somehow seemed to keep crossing, we decided to combine our skills and background to create our joint venture – a walking tours company.

We also wrote for Lonely Planet for several of their walking guides (Walking in Spain and Walking in Scotland) and this was one of the ways we started our business. We asked ourselves: wouldn’t it be great to bring people to these breath-taking, and little-known parts of northern Spain?

Our timing was very good. Back in 1999 people were trusting the internet sufficiently to go online to book a vacation but there wasn’t so much competition that we couldn’t make a niche for ourselves. We figured that our best way to advertise was with a website. We found a friend who knew how to do websites and he put together with us www.onfootinspain.com. At the beginning we also did magazine and newspaper advertising but relied mainly on the website. As the years went by, we discontinued the media advertising and focused solely on the website.

After about six years our friend was not able to make the changes as quickly or as efficiently as we would have liked. We wanted more photos, more control over the site and to be able to upload more content when we wanted. But since the website was our joint venture it was a complicated relationship and we didn’t make any changes.

In the last three years we had noticed that competition had stiffened tremendously as many companies now use the internet to advertise their services and our website was becoming rapidly obsolete.
We finally came to the hard decision that we must make a change. The simple truth is that if clients can’t find you on the internet, then you don’t have any business. And with the economic crisis upon us, when people are tightening their belts, travel is one of the first things to be eliminated.

I dreaded looking for a new webmaster but we definitely needed to bring our website out of the dinosaur days (only 10 years had passed but that’s eternity in the cyber age!). I sent out requests for estimates. I put into the browser: web design Spain. I wanted a content management site so I could control the site as much as possible and to bring it up to speed. I chose the companies that came back on my top 10 lists in my browser. Several offers came back. Many companies never even responded (where’s the crisis?).

One company that I got a quick response from was WebSpain. I had read on the site that they would get back to me within a few hours. I thought, What a joke! Sure enough, there was a message from Pete a few hours later. He could do it all and more very reasonably.
It all sounded too good to be true so I called him on the phone. We chatted not once but several times. Everything that he said spoke of integrity, deep knowledge and a very easy to work with, no-nonsense attitude. But, I am a hard nut to crack. My mother always told me: If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. I told him that too. But as there is always an exception to every rule, I have learned that Pete is THE exception to the rule!

Every single day I count my lucky stars that I came across him and WebSpain (he has not paid me to write this!). Everything that he promised me (and more!) he has come through on. He got my new website developed, uploaded in record speed and all at a very reasonable price.
Every single time I contact him with a query, he always responds with infinite patience and speed.
Pete is one of those rare jewels that, if you’re lucky, you’ll come across once in your life! He knows his stuff, he’s good at it and he gets the job done. I can’t speak highly enough of Pete and his family business WebSpain.

Nancy Frey www.onfootinspain.com