How to give guests directions to a villa or venue

Why a GPS pin is not enough

A pin marks the roof the mapping company thinks is yours; the guest needs the gate. Between the two sit the unnamed roads, forks and private drives where most arrivals go wrong.

• Islands and hill roads. The road network in public and commercial maps is thinner, names are missing, and the route an app picks can be a track rather than the road everyone uses.
• Unnamed roads. "Turn right onto Unnamed Road" cannot be checked against a sign.
• No house numbers. The address geocodes to the road or the area, and the app announces arrival a few hundred feet early or at the wrong drive.
• Gated and shared drives. Two or three properties leave one bend; the pin lands between them.
• The wrong gate. Estates and venues often have a service entrance and a guest entrance, and the pin points at the one deliveries use.
• Signal. The last mile is often where coverage drops, so whatever you send must survive without a connection.

The pin is still one of the three layers; it is just not the whole answer. The 3D driving directions and property maps pages describe the visual layers SkyerWorks builds and the pricing page has the starting prices; the rest of this guide applies whatever you spend.

Five ways to give directions, compared

Written directions and a pin are free and should always be sent. An illustrated map, a photo sequence of the turns and a 3D route preview each add a layer; which one you need depends on how badly the pin fails at your property.

The $200 to $300 figure is where published pricing guides generally put illustrated venue maps from independent illustrators.

Written directions

Still the backbone; the checklist below is the full version. Put the text on the wedding or booking site and in the confirmation email, so it survives a dead signal.

A shared pin

Drop it on the gate yourself rather than searching the address, open it in a second maps app to make sure it lands in the same place, and send the coordinates as plain text as well as a link. A pin is the only layer that gives live navigation, which is why it is always sent, never sent alone.

An illustrated map

The property and its approach in one picture, drawn rather than photographed, with the route as a line. Guests use it on the wedding website, in the welcome binder and from the booking confirmation; it also shows the pool, the rooms and the parking once they are inside the gate. SkyerWorks draws static maps from $250 and interactive maps with up to 8 clickable points of interest from $500.

A photo sequence of the turns

The cheapest visual preview. Photograph each sign and each fork from the driver's view, in order, caption each one with the action ("keep right here"), and put them on a page guests can scroll. Re-shoot when a sign changes.

A 3D route preview

The drive itself, watched before the trip, with the real signs and forks in place. It is for the properties where the first four layers still leave guests at the wrong gate: islands, hillsides, rural lanes. SkyerWorks builds these on Mapbox satellite imagery and 3D terrain or fully self-hosted from public map data, and quotes them to scope; 3D driving directions explains what it includes.

Keep the exact address private until booking

Publish the area and the route from a landmark; send the pin, the gate and the house name after booking.

A villa's public pages (the listing, the wedding website, the property map) can show the island, the bay, the nearest village and the drive from a landmark without putting the exact house on a public map. The confirmation email carries the pin and the last turn. For a wedding, the same thinking applies to the room finder: how guest details are shared, and whether the page needs a password, should be agreed before it goes live, because an unlisted link alone is not private. Anyone with the address can open it, and addresses get forwarded.

A checklist for island and rural properties

Seven things every set of directions to a villa or venue should include, whether you write them, draw them or build them in 3D.

1. Start from a landmark everyone can find. A named junction, a roadside sign, a ferry dock, a gas station; never "the main road". The Island Journey demo starts at the Cabrita Point sign on Route 322.
2. Name the forks. Where the road splits, say what each branch leads to, so a guest who takes the wrong one knows at once: "left to High Point, right to the villa".
3. Photograph the signs. A guest matches a photo to a real sign in a second; a description takes a paragraph.
4. Give distances in minutes and feet. "About five minutes" and "200 feet past the sign" are things a driver can judge; miles to one decimal place are not.
5. Say which side of the road. The turn, the gate, the sign, and, where it applies, which side cars drive on. In the U.S. Virgin Islands they drive on the left.
6. Note the last turn. It is the one guests miss. Describe the gate, what is next to it, and what they will see if they have gone too far.
7. Offer a hand-off to a maps app. A link that opens the live route to the pin you checked, for the part a preview cannot do.

What the Island Journey preview does

Island Journey is a client proof of concept for a villa on St. Thomas: a 3D turn-by-turn preview of the last 1.2 miles to Villa Serenita on Cabrita Point, from the Cabrita Point sign on Route 322, about five minutes of driving.

It opens as a flat overhead map, draws the route, rises into real relief and drives the route with turn cards, pausing for a five-second "Right here" stop at each real roadside sign: the Cabrita Loop sign, the fork to High Point and the parrot sign at the villa drive. At the fork, guests can choose Villa Serenita or High Point, and the turn list follows the road they pick. It runs in the browser on Mapbox, with real satellite imagery, 3D terrain, roads, place labels and 3D trees, and the route comes from the Mapbox Directions API. Buildings near the villa are OpenStreetMap footprints checked against aerial imagery. If Mapbox cannot load, the page switches automatically to a self-hosted version built from OpenStreetMap data and public elevation tiles, with no API keys or third-party requests. Phones without 3D support get the same overhead map and turn list, with a one-tap hand-off to Google Maps. It is generated from a config file, so a new property is a new config.

Against the checklist above: it starts at a landmark, names the fork, shows the signs, gives the distance in minutes, says which side of the road, dwells on the last turn, and hands off to a maps app. Watch it at Island Journey; what SkyerWorks needs from you to build one, and how it is priced, is on 3D driving directions.

Questions about directions to a villa or venue

If your property is one where pins fail, the 3D driving directions page covers what a preview includes and what you supply, the property maps page covers illustrated maps from $250, and the pricing page has every starting price.