Most business' official website are a Facebook page.
In a country of 150M people and growing expat presence, there is a TON of opportunities for software businesses to enter the market.
For example: Riviera Maya has no MLS style real estate tracker/listing platform. The entire real estate industry operates on word of mouth, WhatsApp and Facebook messages.
I've many times seen web presences fail for small organizations, when the only person that understands the web set up leaves. With Facebook, that doesn't happen.
I'm sure there are services such as you describe, and probably many restaurants use them, and it's not obvious. But Facebook is the default.
Others have pointed out the simplicity of it. Just use an existing platform, doesn't take much IT skill at all.
The other answer is that this is where the people are. Why waste time building your own website when only those searching you will visit it? Interacting with the various social media platforms instead gives you far more options on discoverability.
If you must maintain a presence on those platforms anyways, it becomes even less compelling for a small non-tech company to maintain their own infrastructure.
E-commerce platforms, “sharing economy” apps, neo-banks, dating apps, real estate platforms, etc. are all used every single day by millions of people.
How would you typically find a place to rent where you live?
Facebook doesn't act as the central trust authority. So as an expat, most realtor is telling me to avoid FB and use them because scams. But as a user it's inefficient to talk to 20 Realtors for 20 listings.
I just want something in between that doesn't inflate the actual price by 40%
That is what not having proper net neutrality is in Mexico.
Genuinely curious. I've always hated sales but would love to work on making existing solutions better.
Right now depending on how much effort you want to spend, you can get a place for $2000 usd a month or $600 a month, for relatively similar unit maybe 20min of walk distance apart. Simply because information does not flow freely.
Airbnb fixed the trust issue and dominated rental market in the last few years. But hefty fees + taxes are making them less and less viable for travelers.
I honestly see a big opportunity to just improve the overall experience. Especially considering Riviera Maya is the fasted growing realestate market in Mexico.
If you're serious about working on something like this, email me (check my profile), let's connect.