about us
Fourteen Years on Isla Mujeres Built OIE
On Isla is run by Marla Bainbridge who didn't just visit this island. She lived it and built a travel business on it.
Since 2010.
Marla Bainbridge
How a single rental website became the island's group travel team
I'm Marla.
I was born and raised in Alabama, finished my Master's at Pepperdine, and lived in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Portland, and Atlanta before Mexico got hold of me and didn't let go.
I fell in love with Isla Mujeresand the island became my home for fourteen years. I built a business there, built a family there, and learned the island the only way you really can: by living on it through hurricane seasons, holiday rushes, and quiet Septembers when the beaches empty out.
What started in 2010 as one small website for budget rentals has grown into an inventory of properties from family-run stays to luxury villas, a team of private chefs, boat tours, golf carts waiting at the dock, and a group travel operation that has moved everything from bachelorette weekends to 30-person family reunions on and off this island without losing anyone's luggage.
I don't live on Isla full time anymore. But your chef, your captain, your driver, and the person who meets you at the door are all islanders.
Fourteen years taught me who the best people on the island are. Now they're the team.
What booking with OIE actually means
We've been doing this since 2010.
Fifteen years of arrivals, departures, weather calls, and last-minute changes. There is no version of your trip we haven't already handled.
Our team lives on the island.
The chefs, the captains, the drivers, the concierge who hands you your door code: these are islander locals, not a call center. When something needs solving at 9pm, it gets solved by someone five minutes away.
We work directly with property owners.
Owners hire us to represent their homes, which means we know every property we offer. When you tell us your group is six adults, two kids, and a grandmother who can't do stairs, we know which house fits before you do.
You get a real person before you land.
Every booking comes with a name and a phone number on the island. Send us your flight details and your arrival is planned around them: driver at the airport, ferry tickets bought ahead, cart delivered.
Everything on the Island. We have the contact.
Isla Mujeres Vacation Rentals (IMVR). Villas and condos across every price range, including family-run properties that don't advertise online and can't be found on Airbnb. Working with travelers since 2010.
On Isla Private Chef Services and Catering. Private chefs cooking in your villa kitchen, grocery stocking before you arrive, tequila classes, and full catered events. Our chefs are locals who have been feeding island visitors since 2010.
On Isla Experiences. Whale shark tours in season, snorkel trips, sunset cruises, catamaran charters, and private boats. We book the captains we'd send our own family out with. On this island, that's not a figure of speech.
Planning and logistics. Airport transfers, golf cart rentals delivered to the ferry dock, group itineraries built around your actual flight times.
the island
The island we know like family, because it is
Isla Mujeres is about five miles long and, in places, less than a mile wide. The Mayans knew it as a sanctuary of Ixchel, the goddess of the moon, and the remains of her temple still stand at Punta Sur, the eastern-most point of Mexico. The sunrise reaches this island before anywhere else in the country.
It's also one of the safest destinations in the region. The islanders are proud of that, and protective of it, because this is home. That's the island we want you to experience: not the version you get from a resort shuttle, but the one you get when the people running your trip grew up there.
Tell us about your trip
Whether it's two of you or thirty, a long weekend or a wedding, start with a conversation. Tell us who's coming and what you want the trip to feel like, and we'll build it from there.