Prepared for your portfolio · Branson & Dexter, Missouri
A direct booking platform for your split-level in Branson and your four properties in Dexter. It holds every calendar, quotes extensions, takes card or stablecoin straight to you, files the right lodging tax for the right county, and sends the receipt by text or email. Twelve weeks from mobilization to launch. Below is what it costs, what it returns, and exactly what we need from you and by when.
Before you pay us anything
We ran the regulatory review on your markets before writing this offer. Two items came back that are worth more to you than anything else on this page, and they are true whether or not you ever hire us.
Branson applies a combined 12.975% in lodging taxes — 4.225% Missouri state, 1.875–2.25% Taney County, 2.5% Branson city, and a 4% Branson tourism tax. That last one is due by the 20th of each month, and the City of Branson states plainly that no third-party platform, Airbnb and Vrbo included, is authorized to remit it on an owner's behalf.
The question: have you been filing and paying the 4% tourism tax directly? If the answer is "I assumed the platform handled it," there may be an accrued liability of roughly $1,300 a year on that property, before penalties and interest. We are not accusing you of anything — most owners we speak to have never been told.
Branson Ordinance No. 2024-0065 took effect 1 May 2025. It requires a short-term rental permit issued by the Branson Fire Department after an approved safety inspection, plus a business licence at $150. The permit runs three years and transfers with ownership. Critically, nightly rental is permitted only in higher-density residential zoning — not in low-density districts.
The question: do you hold a current STR permit, and is the split-level's address inside a district where nightly rental is allowed? The city publishes a GIS lookup. Check it before you spend money on any booking system, ours included — if the zoning is wrong, software is not the problem to solve first.
Why we lead with this. AMI2C LLC is not a law firm and none of this is legal advice. But the difference between a booking website and a booking platform is that somebody did the regulatory work first. We did two items of it for free so you can judge the other sixteen. Your attorney and accountant make the calls; we build to their answers.
Twelve weeks
Five gates, each ending in a signature. The dates below are real and they hold in one direction only: our side is committed, and every date depends on the items in the right column arriving on time. This is not a formality — the schedule carries 140 hours of slack in total, and a single late item consumes most of it.
Your five properties inventoried, the Branson and Dexter tax stacks mapped, the §01–§18 compliance map written to your portfolio, and your carrier text-messaging registration filed on day two so it clears long before we need it.
Gate 1 · Fri 25 Sep · compliance map and scope signed
Your brand, the public site, five property pages built to be found in search, and the whole booking flow — including the screens nobody designs and every guest eventually hits: no availability, extension refused, payment pending, payment failed.
Gate 2 · Fri 9 Oct · design and every flow state signed
Availability across all five doors with real locking, seasonal and length-of-stay rates, the extension engine, two-way calendar sync with the channels you still list on, your guest portal, and your admin console.
Gate 3 · Fri 30 Oct · engine acceptance against the written test matrix
Card and bank transfer, non-custodial stablecoin settlement direct to your wallet, sanctions screening at quote, invoicing with deposits and balances, the Branson 12.975% and Dexter tax stacks computed per booking, and receipts by text and email.
Gate 4 · Fri 13 Nov · end-to-end money test, testnet and live sandbox
Screen reader and keyboard passes over the whole booking path, WCAG 2.2 AA audit and remediation, your accessibility conformance report, load and restore-from-backup testing, security review, and go-live.
Gate 5 · Fri 4 Dec · launch, handover and runbook complete
Daily monitoring, same-day fixes on anything that blocks a booking, two training sessions, and a written runbook. Your Dexter properties do not go quiet over the holidays, so neither do we.
Your side of the schedule
Every one of these has a drop-dead date. Items marked hard stop will move the launch date if they are late — there is no way to build around them. Everything else eats slack. We will chase you, but we would rather you had the list up front.
| # | What we need | Due | If it is late |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Signed agreement and the $7,800 mobilization payment | Fri 11 Sep | Start date moves week for week |
| 2 | One named approver plus a backup, with direct contact details | Fri 11 Sep | Gates cannot be signed |
| 3 | Legal entity name, EIN and business address — for carrier text registration | Mon 14 Sep | Hard stop · delays text receipts by 1–3 weeks |
| 4 | Domain access, or written authority for us to register one for you | Mon 14 Sep | Blocks email authentication setup |
| 5 | All five property addresses, unit counts, sleeps and bed configuration | Wed 16 Sep | Blocks the whole compliance map |
| 6 | Proof of ownership or management authority per property | Wed 16 Sep | Blocks permit and tax verification |
| 7 | Branson STR permit number and fire inspection date — or confirmation there is none | Thu 17 Sep | Hard stop · may block the Branson unit entirely |
| 8 | Lodging tax account numbers: Missouri DOR, Taney County, City of Branson, Stoddard County | Fri 18 Sep | Blocks the tax engine in Phase 04 |
| 9 | Read access to your current Airbnb and Vrbo accounts | Fri 18 Sep | Blocks calendar sync and rate import |
| 10 | Current rate cards, cancellation policy, house rules, minimum stays | Wed 23 Sep | We build to defaults you may not want |
| 11 | Your attorney's contact, for the funds-flow memo | Wed 23 Sep | Hard stop · gates the stablecoin rail in Phase 04 |
| 12 | Accessibility attribute survey completed — one short form per unit, we provide it | Fri 25 Sep | Blocks the accessible-unit path required by federal rule |
| 13 | Payment account onboarding completed by you — we never see your credentials | Fri 9 Oct | Blocks the card rail in Phase 04 |
| 14 | Settlement wallet address, generated by you — we never hold keys | Fri 9 Oct | Blocks the stablecoin rail in Phase 04 |
| 15 | Professional photography — 20+ images per property, plus your logo and brand assets | Fri 20 Nov | Hard stop · launches an empty site; no workaround exists |
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The full questionnaire — every item above plus the twenty-six specific questions we need answered in weeks one and two — is a separate page you can work through at your own pace, and a checklist file you can download and tick off.
Investment
AMI2C maintains a booking platform used across every client we build for. You can licence it — which is what almost everyone should do — or you can buy the whole thing outright and owe us nothing afterwards. We have priced both honestly, and we will tell you which one we think you want.
Keyring licence Recommended
19,500 US dollars12 weeks · 2 revision rounds per stage · launch 4 Dec 2026
A perpetual licence to run the platform for your properties, for as long as you like. You own everything that is yours: your data, your guest list, your content, photography, brand, domain, wallet and payment accounts. Export it all at any time, in open formats. AMI2C keeps the reusable engine underneath — which is precisely why this costs $19,500 instead of $179,000.
Full ownership buyout
179,000 US dollarsSame 12 weeks · same system · you own the source outright
Everything above, plus exclusive assignment of the entire codebase including the reusable engine. No licence, no dependency on us, no restrictions. This is not a markup — it is what building this system from nothing actually costs, and we can show you the workings.
Our honest recommendation: licence it. On a five-property portfolio, a $179,000 buyout does not pay back inside a decade on any revenue assumption we can defend. The buyout exists because some owners want the asset on their balance sheet and some lenders want to see it there. If that is not you, the licence gives you every practical benefit — including walking away with all of your data — for eleven percent of the price.
The whole cost, not just the build
Software companies quote the build and stay quiet about the rest. Here is all of it. The recurring line drops sharply after year one, because search work front-loads and your Dexter market reaches its ceiling fast.
| Line | Year 1 | Year 2 onward | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform build — Keyring licence | $19,500 | $0 | One time, three milestones |
| Direct Channel Foundation — search setup | $3,900 | $0 | One time, delivered inside the build |
| Channel Watch — search maintenance | $7,200 | $3,600 | $600/mo year one, $300/mo after |
| Care plan — Watch tier | $3,150 | $4,200 | $350/mo, starts after the 90-day cover |
| Infrastructure, at cost in your name | $1,650 | $1,650 | Hosting, database, email, SMS, monitoring |
| Accessibility audit and conformance report | included | — | Quoted elsewhere at $1,500–$8,000 |
| Regulatory review, §01–§18 | included | — | Not offered by most build shops at any price |
| Total | $35,400 | $9,450 | Year two onward is 27% of year one |
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Return
We do not know your actual revenue, so we have modelled three levels and shown all of them. Substitute your real figure and the shape does not change: you spend in year one, you are roughly level in year two, and the asset pays from year three onward — because the build is a one-time cost and the benefits compound.
| Annual portfolio revenue | Year 1 net | Year 2 net | Year 3 net | Cumulative at year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $105,000 — conservative | −$25,988 | +$7,462 | +$13,575 | −$4,950 |
| $138,360 — our base case | −$23,569 | +$11,883 | +$19,747 | +$8,060 |
| $175,000 — strong season | −$20,912 | +$16,738 | +$26,525 | +$22,350 |
| Year | Benefit | Cost | Net | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $11,831 | $35,400 | −$23,569 | −$23,569 |
| 2 | $21,333 | $9,450 | +$11,883 | −$11,686 |
| 3 | $29,197 | $9,450 | +$19,747 | +$8,060 |
| 4 | $33,002 | $9,450 | +$23,552 | +$31,612 |
| 5 | $34,385 | $9,450 | +$24,935 | +$56,547 |
| Five-year position | $129,748 | $73,200 | — | +$56,547 |
Where these numbers are soft, and where they are not. Branson has published market data and our figure sits near the average for the market — a split-level sleeping eight or more is in the segment that outperforms it, so we have probably been conservative. Dexter has no published short-term rental data at all; our estimate is built from what the town's four hotels charge and a 45% occupancy assumption. Replace it with your own numbers before you decide anything. The direct-booking share ramp — 35%, 55%, 70% — is the assumption we would challenge hardest if we were you, because it depends on how consistently you push guests to rebook direct. The platform makes that possible; it does not do it for you.
The mechanism
The direct-booking share in the table above is the assumption we would challenge hardest if we were reading this as a buyer. So here is the machinery behind it. It is not hope — it is a guest list you are allowed to email, and sequences that run whether or not you remember to send them.
Every guest chooses their channel and opts in — or does not — at the moment they book, with the choice timestamped and logged. That is a legal requirement under the text and email rules in our compliance map, and it is also what turns a guest list from a liability into an asset you can actually use.
Review request after checkout. Rebooking offer timed to the season they travelled in. Win-back at ten months. Abandoned-booking recovery when someone picks dates and leaves. Each one is built once and runs on every guest afterwards, without you touching it.
Your Branson leisure guest and your Dexter contractor are not the same person and should never get the same email. They are segmented from the first booking, with separate campaigns, separate offers and separate seasonal timing.
Your site runs on ClickFunnels, which exists for precisely this: opt-in pages, multi-step campaigns, automated follow-up and audience warming. We are not bolting marketing onto a booking system — we are putting the booking system inside a platform engineered to convert.
This is why the compliance work pays for itself twice. A guest list gathered without documented consent is not a marketing asset — it is a statutory damages exposure, priced per message. The consent capture, opt-out handling and send logging are already built because the law requires them. The marketing value is what you get as a consequence of the build.
Being found
Selling you one package for both markets would be selling you the wrong thing twice. They are not the same problem with a volume dial.
Branson has about 1,045 active short-term rental listings against roughly 51% occupancy, and listings grew 116% year over year. Supply is running ahead of demand. One property will not outrank Airbnb, Vrbo and three established Branson management companies for "branson cabins" in year one — competitive head terms take 7 to 18 months even with a large budget, and we will not pretend otherwise.
So search here does a different job: owning your own property's name, your Google Business Profile, and the long-tail phrases that describe your specific split-level. The guest who found you on Airbnb last year searches for you by name this year. Own that result and a commissioned booking becomes an uncommissioned one — with no ranking battle at all.
There is essentially no "Dexter vacation rental" search market; the town has 7,833 people. But lodging demand plainly exists — somebody did the arithmetic and built a Hampton Inn there. That demand is contractors, travel nurses, insurance-displaced families, hunting season and family visits, and it books by the week, not the night.
Low-competition long-tail terms can rank in one to three months. In Dexter that means near-total organic ownership of every relevant phrase within a quarter, cheaply. Your competitor is not another rental — it is the Hampton Inn on a seven-night stay, where a whole house with a kitchen and laundry wins on both price and suitability. We target extended stay, weekly rental and furnished house, not vacation rental.
| Year | Cost | Attributable revenue | Net | What is happening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $11,100 | $2,767 | −$8,333 | Foundation built; Dexter starts ranking; Branson indexes |
| 2 | $3,600 | $6,918 | +$3,318 | Dexter owns its local pack; Branson long-tail lands |
| 3 | $3,600 | $11,069 | +$7,469 | Real traffic; Branson contends for mid-tail terms |
| 4 | $3,600 | $13,836 | +$10,236 | Dexter at its ceiling; Branson authority compounds |
| 5 | $3,600 | $15,220 | +$11,620 | Maintenance only in Dexter; Branson still climbing |
| Five years | $25,500 | $49,810 | +$24,310 | Nearly 2× return, and the rankings are yours |
Search loses money in year one. We would rather say that now than in ninety days. Nothing ranks during the twelve-week build, and very little in the first quarter after launch. Every dollar of direct-booking revenue in months one to six comes from converting guests you already have — the rebooking sequence, your Google Business Profile, and owning your own name. Search is a compounding asset with a two-to-three quarter fuse. Unlike advertising, when you stop paying it does not disappear: the rankings, the profiles and the reviews stay yours.
What this costs elsewhere
Market figures come from published industry pricing, not from us: verified agency review data, federal wage statistics, and current local search retainers. Sources are listed at the bottom of this page and we will send the full workings to anyone who asks.
| Component | Market | AMI2C | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom booking platform, this scope | $132,480 | $19,500 | $112,980 |
| Search setup | $2,500 | $3,900 | −$1,400 |
| Local search, 5 locations, 2 markets | $30,000 | $7,200 | $22,800 |
| Accessibility audit and conformance report | $4,750 | included | $4,750 |
| Regulatory compliance mapping | not offered | included | — |
| Maintenance, 9 months post-warranty | $19,872 | $3,150 | $16,722 |
| Twelve-month total | $189,602 | $33,750 | $155,852 |
| AMI2C as a share of market cost | 100% | 17.8% | 82.2% saved |
We are not cheap because the work is smaller. We are cheap because AMI2C is two people and an engine being built "in house", rather than a firm with account managers, a sales floor and an office. The buyout price of $179,000 in the previous section is what this system costs when nobody has built it before — which is the same arithmetic, run honestly, in the other direction.
The agreement
Next step
Do not mobilize yet. Work through the questionnaire — it takes about forty minutes and several answers may change what we recommend, particularly the two Branson questions at the top of this page. If the zoning or the tourism tax turns out to be a problem, that is the thing to fix, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a booking system.
Know another owner who needs this? We pay a referral commission on any package that closes from an introduction you make — either band, build or search. Ask us for a tracked link and we will set it up. The owners who send us work tend to end up with more say in what we build next, which is usually worth more to them than the commission.
Ready to hold the slot? Mobilize for $7,800 — 40% of $19,500, and it starts the clock on 14 September.
AMI2C LLC · Fixed scope, fixed price, gates you sign · Proposal valid 30 days
Sources — Branson market: AirROI & Rabbu 2026. Dexter: World Population Review 2026. Branson Ordinance 2024-0065 and tax stack: City of Branson. Build cost comparables: Clutch verified reviews, RaftLabs 2026. Wage basis: US Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS, May 2025. Search pricing and timelines: SEOProfy, Arc4, SEO.com 2026. Accessibility audit pricing: DigitalA11Y 2026. Full workings available on request.