Website creation for hotels
A hotel that relies entirely on booking platforms like Booking.com or Expedia to fill its rooms hands over between 15 and 25 % of every night's revenue, which over a full season adds up to a sum that many properties would rather invest in their premises, their staff or their guest experience. This page covers what a hotel website needs to persuade travellers to book directly, the market pricing in Swiss francs according to the level of service you choose, the local SEO strategies that help your property appear on Google when a traveller searches for accommodation in your area, and the concrete approach that gradually reduces your dependence on intermediaries.
Why your hotel needs its own website
Every booking that goes through a third-party platform costs your hotel between 15 and 25 % of the room rate, depending on the platform and the visibility programme you participate in. For a 30-room property with an average rate of 150 francs per night and 70 % occupancy, where two thirds of bookings come through these platforms, the commissions add up to between 115,000 and 190,000 francs per year, money that leaves your cash flow without giving you any direct contact with the guest or any usable data for building loyalty. A website that captures even a quarter of those bookings directly reduces that bill by tens of thousands of francs each year, and the savings cover the cost of building and maintaining the site well before the first season is over.
When a traveller looks at your hotel on a booking platform, they see your property presented in the same format as every other listing, with the same photo categories, the same description fields and the same competitor suggestions displayed right below your page. This standardised layout prevents you from telling the story of what makes your property different, whether it's the view over the lake, the history of the building, the restaurant menu or the atmosphere you've built over the years. Your own website is the only space where you fully control how travellers discover your hotel, from full-screen photographs and descriptions written in your own words to the seasonal offers you choose to highlight.
Most hotel bookings start on a phone, often during a commute or in the minutes after deciding to travel, and the traveller looking at a Google result on their screen expects to browse rooms, check availability and book within a few taps without zooming in or waiting for a page to finish loading. A site that loads fast on a small screen, shows available rooms for the right dates and lets the traveller complete the booking on the spot without redirecting to a third-party platform keeps them exactly where you want them, on your own site, with zero commission.
The real return on a hotel website isn't just the immediate bookings but the direct relationship you build with every guest who books through your own channel, because you capture their email address, their stay dates and their preferences instead of leaving that information with the intermediary. A guest who enjoyed their stay and receives a personalised offer from you a few months before the next season won't go through a platform to book again, they'll go straight to your site. This direct-channel loyalty is what turns a website costing between a few thousand and fifteen thousand francs into an investment that pays for itself across multiple seasons.
What a good hotel website should include
Travellers visiting a hotel website want to see the rooms before making up their mind, and the photos you publish on your own site are the most important in your entire online presence because they don't have to compete with a competitor's listing right next to yours. Each room category deserves its own section with large-format photos showing the space, the bedding, the window view and the bathroom, alongside an honest description of what the traveller will find on arrival. Common areas matter as much as the rooms themselves, because a traveller who sees the terrace, the restaurant, the lobby and the pool pictures a stay, while one who only sees bedrooms pictures a single night.
A booking engine built into your website is the piece that turns a visitor into a guest without sending them off to a third-party platform to complete the reservation. Current solutions like Mews, Clock PMS or Cloudbeds offer booking widgets that integrate into your site in a few lines of code, display real-time availability synchronised with your property management system and let the traveller select dates, choose a room and pay online without leaving your page. The commission you pay to these systems, typically between 1 and 5 % of the booking amount, stays well below the 15 to 25 % that booking platforms charge on every night sold.
A hotel in Switzerland welcomes guests who speak French, German, Italian and English, and a property in France near a border or in a tourist area regularly hosts visitors who don't speak French. Your site needs to address each of these audiences in their own language, with translations written by people who understand the local expressions rather than machine translations whose awkward phrasing erodes trust. In practice, a bilingual French-English site covers the vast majority of visitors, and a trilingual site that adds German or Italian is relevant for hotels in border regions or multilingual cantons.
The loading speed of a hotel website directly affects how many visitors reach the booking page, because every extra second of waiting pushes a measurable share of travellers back to the search results where they'll pick the next hotel in the list. A site that loads in under two seconds on a mobile connection holds the traveller's attention and gives the impression of a well-run property, in much the same way that a clean, well-lit lobby reassures a guest arriving for the first time. The high-resolution photos you publish need to be compressed into web-friendly formats without losing visible quality, and the site itself needs to be built with lightweight code that doesn't load unnecessary scripts. The page on custom website creation walks through the full process of a site built from scratch.
The reviews your guests leave on Google, on booking platforms or on TripAdvisor are one of the most influential factors in a traveller's decision, and your website should make them visible rather than leaving them only on platform profiles where they help your competitors as much as they help you. Displaying a selection of recent reviews on your site, with the guest's name and the date of their stay, creates social proof that the visitor doesn't need to go elsewhere to find. A link to your Google or TripAdvisor profile lets the most sceptical visitors verify for themselves that the reviews are genuine, which strengthens trust rather than weakening it.
How much does a hotel website cost
For a small property that wants an initial online presence with contact details, a few room photos and a link to an external booking platform, solutions like Wix or Squarespace offer hospitality templates for between 200 and 500 francs per year, hosting and domain name included. This type of site answers travellers who search for your name on Google and simply want to verify that you exist, but it offers no integrated booking engine and not enough flexibility to create a visual experience that matches the standard of your property.
A custom hotel website with a design that reflects your property's visual identity, a professional photo gallery of each room category and common areas, an integrated booking engine synchronised with your property management system, a bilingual French-English version and local SEO configured for your area sits between 5,000 and 10,000 francs. This budget covers graphic design, development, booking engine integration, SEO configuration for queries related to your city and accommodation type, and training so your team can update text, photos and displayed rates without outside help.
More ambitious projects that include a trilingual or quadrilingual site, a dedicated section for seminars and events with a custom enquiry form, advanced PMS integration displaying live rate updates, an integrated blog for SEO, or features like an online loyalty programme sit between 10,000 and 18,000 francs. These budgets apply to group hotels or upscale properties that need a site capable of presenting a wide range of services in a polished way.
On top of the creation costs, factor in the recurring expenses that keep your website online and functional: between 20 and 50 francs per month for hosting, 15 to 25 francs per year for domain renewal, and between 150 and 400 francs per month if you outsource technical maintenance, security updates, seasonal photo updates and regular content publishing to a provider. The booking engine fees, billed by the widget provider rather than the site builder, add to these amounts but remain a fraction of what you currently pay the platforms on every night booked through their channels. For a complete cost overview, see the article on how much a website costs or request a quote.
Direct bookings and Google visibility
When a traveller types 'hotel Geneva' or 'lakeside hotel Annecy' into Google, the first results they see aren't websites but the Google Hotel Pack, a panel that shows a map, photos, prices from several hotels and a link to book. Google displays rates from Booking.com, Expedia and other intermediaries in this panel, but it also shows the direct rate from your own website if your booking engine is correctly connected to Google Hotel Ads or a compatible channel manager. Appearing in this panel with a direct rate equal to or lower than the platforms' encourages travellers to click through to your site rather than to an intermediary, because most informed travellers prefer to book directly when the price is the same.
The local SEO of your hotel website relies on consistency between your Google Business Profile, your website content and the information published on your region's tourism directories. When these elements are aligned, with the same name, the same address, the same phone number and the same photos on every platform, Google considers your property a verified player in the area and positions it higher in local results. Your Google Business Profile deserves particular care, with recent photos of your rooms and common areas, a reply to every review left by a guest, and regular updates that signal to Google that your property is active. The article on local SEO walks through each step of this work.
Publishing articles on your site about activities near your hotel, seasonal events in your area or itineraries that your guests enjoy attracts visitors who haven't chosen their accommodation yet and who discover your property while researching the destination. An article describing nearby hikes, restaurants or cultural visits receives traffic from travellers planning their trip, and your hotel appears naturally as an accommodation option since they're already on your site. This type of content keeps attracting traffic for years and brings visitors that booking platforms don't send you.
The most cost-effective medium-term strategy for reducing your platform dependency is to turn every guest who books directly into a loyal client who will never again go through an intermediary to return to your property. It starts with collecting their email address at the time of booking, continues with a personalised thank-you message after their stay, and materialises as a return offer sent a few months before the next season with a perk reserved for direct clients that the platforms can't match. This approach doesn't replace the platforms overnight, but it gradually shifts the share of direct bookings year after year, and every percentage point gained on the direct channel is a commission saving that goes straight into your cash flow.
From brief to launch
The work begins with a conversation about your property, your clientele, your high and low seasons, your local competitors and how you currently handle bookings, because this information drives the design choices, the languages to cover, the booking engine to integrate and the content strategy that will accompany the site after launch. This conversation results in a clear brief that describes every page of the site, the planned features, the delivery timeline and the itemised budget. You can also see the page on restaurant website creation for a closely related industry.
The design phase produces visual mockups for your site, with the colour palette, typography and photographic style that reflect your property's identity rather than a generic template any hotel could use. The mockups show what the site looks like on a desktop screen and on a phone, with the photo gallery, the booking module and the navigation across languages, and you approve or adjust them before development starts to avoid costly back-and-forth during the build phase.
Development turns the approved mockups into a working site, connected to your booking engine and synchronised with your property management system so that the availability displayed on your site matches reality at all times. Local SEO is configured during this phase, with the site submitted to Google, your Google Business Profile verified and an analytics tool installed so you can track the number of visitors, the most viewed pages and the bookings that originate from your site.
Before going live, the site is tested on the main browsers and on different screen sizes to verify that everything works correctly, including the full booking flow with a test payment. Your team receives training to update text, add or replace photos, change displayed rates and check visitor statistics, so you don't depend on a provider for routine updates after launch.
Frequently asked questions about hotel websites
How much does a hotel website cost?
Expect between 200 and 500 francs per year for a platform solution, between 5,000 and 10,000 francs for a custom site with an integrated booking engine and bilingual version, and between 10,000 and 18,000 francs for a multilingual project with advanced PMS integration and features like a loyalty programme. Add 20 to 50 francs per month for hosting and 15 to 25 francs per year for the domain.
Does my hotel website need a booking engine?
A booking engine built into your site lets travellers check availability, choose a room and pay online without leaving your page, which removes the reflex to complete the booking on a third-party platform. Current solutions like Mews, Clock PMS or Cloudbeds integrate easily and charge between 1 and 5 % of the booking amount, which stays well below platform commissions.
How can I reduce the share of bookings going through Booking.com or Expedia?
The first step is to offer a rate on your own website that's at least equal to, and ideally slightly lower than, the rate displayed on the platforms, so travellers who compare prices have a reason to book directly. Then, a loyalty strategy based on collecting email addresses and sending offers reserved for direct clients gradually shifts bookings to your channel, season after season.
Should a hotel website be multilingual?
If your clientele includes travellers who don't speak the main language of your site, offering at least an English version covers the vast majority of international visitors. For hotels in Switzerland, adding German is relevant if your property is in a French-speaking canton near the language border, and a quadrilingual site addresses properties that welcome guests from all of the country's linguistic regions.
How long does it take to build a hotel website?
A hotel website with a photo gallery, integrated booking engine, bilingual version and local SEO takes between six and eight weeks, accounting for graphic design, development, booking system integration and testing. If you add extra languages, an integrated blog or advanced features like a loyalty programme, allow an additional two to four weeks.
What pages should a hotel website include at minimum?
A functional hotel website includes at minimum a home page that makes the traveller want to explore further, a page for each room category with photos and description, a page covering common areas and services, a booking page with the integrated engine, a contact page with a map and form, and a page about local activities and attractions that also helps with SEO.
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