The range
A hospitality business website costs from a free marketplace listing to several thousand, and the spread is about one thing: whether the site can take the booking itself, with live availability and an inclusive price, or whether it sends the guest back to the marketplace that charges you commission. Here are the bands.
Band 1: the marketplace listing, or the booking tool's page
Booking.com, Airbnb, OpenTable's network, Viator and Hostelworld all give you a page. So does your booking system: OpenTable and ResDiary host a reservation page, Lodgify and SiteMinder a booking page, FareHarbor and Bookeo a storefront.
Cost: nothing up front, plus commission or per-cover fees on every booking, plus the subscription you already pay.
You get: a way to be booked.
You do not get: your own domain ranking for "[restaurant] [town]" or "cottage near [place]", the guest's email address, room or menu pages that sell the place, a gift voucher shop, or any reason for a guest to book direct rather than on the marketplace they found you on.
Right for: the first season of a single holiday let or a new café.
Band 2: a template site, $800 to $2,500 (roughly £650 to £2,000)
A hospitality theme on Squarespace, Wix or WordPress with your logo, a gallery and a "Book now" button that opens the marketplace or the booking tool in a new tab.
You get: a presentable site with your name on it.
Usually missing: the booking engine embedded with live availability rather than linked out; prices that include tax and fees; a menu as text rather than a PDF; real photography compressed to load fast on a phone; a page per room, tour or escape room; hours and location marked up for Google; hosting in your name.
Right for: a business that is full from repeat guests and wants a business card online.
Band 3: a purpose-built hospitality site, $2,500 to $6,000 (roughly £2,000 to £4,800)
Built around how a guest chooses and books: a reservation or booking engine embedded from OpenTable, ResDiary, SiteMinder, Lodgify, FareHarbor or Bookeo, with live availability on your site; inclusive prices as consumer law requires; menus, rooms or experiences described as structured text Google can read; real photography of the actual rooms, tables and activities; a location and getting-here page; Google reviews pulled in; gift vouchers sold online; fast on a phone; tracking on every Book button; everything in your name.
You get: a site that ranks for your name and your area, shows the guest exactly what they are booking, and takes the booking without the commission.
Not usually included: photography, copywriting unless specified, the booking system subscription.
Right for: restaurants, B&Bs, escape rooms, tour operators, campsites and any hospitality business paying commission on guests who searched for it by name.
Band 4: hotels, groups and multi-property, $8,000 and up
Boutique hotels with a PMS, rate comparison widget, restaurant and spa booking and a weddings enquiry flow. Restaurant groups with several sites. Holiday let portfolios with a search across properties. Multilingual builds with hreflang.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual.
- Booking engine: whatever you pay now. OpenTable charges per cover on network bookings; ResDiary and Bookeo are flat subscriptions; FareHarbor charges the guest a booking fee; SiteMinder and Lodgify are monthly.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a modest monthly fee, covering the booking widget when the vendor updates it.
- Photography: a half day for rooms, tables, food and the activity itself. Guests book what they can see, and the marketplace already has better photos of your place than most owners' own sites do.
Where the band 3 money goes
- The booking engine embedded, with live availability, tested on a phone, deep-linked from every room, menu or experience page.
- Inclusive pricing structured as records: room rates with tax, per-person tour prices, escape room prices by group size, so nothing surprises at checkout.
- Menus, rooms or experiences as text, editable by you, marked up so Google shows them.
- Speed, because the guest is on a phone in the street or on a train.
- Reviews and vouchers, pulled from Google and sold online.
- Tracking of bookings, calls and voucher sales by page.
- Ownership and a recorded walkthrough.
Judging a quote
Ask: is the booking engine embedded or linked out; does the site show live availability; are prices inclusive of tax and fees; is the menu text or a PDF; how fast does the home page load on mobile data; what is tracked; whose name is the hosting in.
What we charge
Our hospitality sites are band 3 at a fixed price; the scope is on the hospitality business website page. If your site is in band 1 or 2, the number to work out is how much commission you paid last year on guests who had already found you, because that is the budget the site should have been built from.