The symptom
The site gets visitors from Google and Instagram. The bookings still arrive through Booking.com, OpenTable's app or Viator, with the commission attached, and the phone rings with "have you got a table Saturday" and "is the cottage free in August". Guests who visit the site are not booking from it. On hospitality sites we review, the cause is on this list, usually several at once. Check them in order.
1. The site cannot take the booking
The Book button opens a contact form, an email address, or another company's website. The guest wanted to see availability and book; instead they are asked to wait for a reply, or they are back on the marketplace, where they book, and you pay.
Fix: the booking engine embedded on your site with live availability. OpenTable, ResDiary or Tock for a restaurant; SiteMinder, Little Hotelier, Lodgify or Beds24 for accommodation, synced with your channel manager; FareHarbor or Bookeo for experiences. Same availability as the marketplace, on your domain.
2. Prices surprise at checkout
The room says one price and the checkout adds tax, a cleaning fee, a booking fee. The guest feels tricked, abandons, and books somewhere that showed the total. Consumer law in most countries now requires the inclusive price up front, and drip pricing is increasingly illegal as well as resented.
Fix: prices including tax and mandatory fees on the page, matching the engine's total. Where a fee is optional, say so and show it.
3. Book is not one tap away on a phone
The button is in a menu, or below the gallery, or the widget does not fit a phone screen and the guest cannot pick a date.
Fix: a Book button in the header on every page, deep-linked to the engine with the room, tour or party size pre-selected, tested on a phone and in the in-app browsers Instagram and Google Maps open.
4. The site takes four seconds
Full-size photos on cheap hosting. Hospitality sites are the slowest category we measure because the photography matters and nobody compressed it.
Fix: images sized and compressed, the hero prioritised, the gallery lazy-loaded, sliders removed, decent hosting. Under two seconds on mobile data.
5. The photos do not do the place justice
The marketplace has professional photos of your rooms; your site has a phone snap from 2019. The guest compares and books where it looks better, which is the listing that charges you.
Fix: a half day of real photography: rooms as they are, the table by the window, the food, the boat, the escape room set without spoilers. Compressed and used on every page that sells.
6. Menus, rooms or experiences are not described properly
A PDF menu Google cannot read and a phone cannot search. Three rooms on one page with no sizes or inclusions. One Tours page for six tours. Guests cannot find what they want and search cannot find you.
Fix: a page per room, tour or escape room, and the menu as structured text with prices, allergens and dietary tags, editable by you, marked up so Google shows hours, menu and prices in results.
7. There is no reason to book direct
The guest sees the same room at the same price on the marketplace they already trust, with free cancellation and a familiar checkout. Why would they switch?
Fix: a direct-booking perk stated plainly beside the Book button: a best-rate guarantee, a small discount, a late checkout, a welcome drink, a free voucher upgrade. B&Bs and holiday lets that state one win the comparison; those that do not lose it.
8. Nobody knows what the site produces
Without booking clicks and completed bookings by page, you cannot tell which of the seven is the problem, or how much commission you are still paying on guests who visited your site first.
Fix: events for Book taps, completed bookings, call taps and voucher sales by page; the engine's source report; a monthly look against the marketplace statements.
The order
Items 1, 2 and 3 are the path from a guest's phone to a confirmed booking. Items 4, 5 and 6 are whether they want to. Item 7 is why they book here rather than there. Item 8 is how you know.
Where this sits
This is the conversion checklist every hospitality business website we build is tested against and the first half of a diagnosis on an existing one. Most hospitality sites fail at least four; embedding the engine and stating the inclusive price are the two fixes that move the bookings off the marketplace fastest.