Web design in Bruges (Brugge)

Web design in Bruges is something else than in a city where your customers live round the corner. In 2024 almost 8 million visitors came to the city centre, and the accommodation counted 1.1 million arrivals of guests who stayed at least one night. Bruges itself has 120,458 residents. A guesthouse on the Langestraat, a chocolatier in the Steenstraat or a bike rental at the station sells mostly to people who do not know the city, often in another language, and who decide on their phone, on the train or in their hotel room.

Many of those businesses are run in English too: by owners who moved to Bruges, by international hotel groups, by teams where half the staff came from abroad. This page is written for them. Google shows how people search: in English, 'website design bruges' and 'web design bruges' come back with 'belgium' added, and in Dutch 'webdesign brugge', 'webdesigner brugge' and 'website laten maken brugge' rank high. Below you read what a Bruges site has to do for tourists, what a booking platform costs you against your own site, which languages to build first, what the city offers traders, and how we build it from Ghent, 44 minutes by car or about 25 minutes by train.

Hospitality counts 1,268 businesses in Bruges, almost one in ten of all companies. Across Flanders that share is about 5 percent, in Bruges more than 9. That is the market a Bruges site works for.

Booking.com and Airbnb bring guests, and for a new place to stay they are often essential. But they charge a commission per booking. How much differs per business and per contract; around 15 percent is a common figure. On twenty nights at 180 euros that is 540 euros, or three nights whose revenue goes to the platform.

The sum only works if your site does what a platform does: an availability calendar that is right, prices you see before you have to email, a request or booking in a few clicks and a confirmation in the guest's language. Without a calendar a guest does not write, and a request left unanswered for three days books through the platform after all.

• Choose a booking site of your own ifyour place already has a core of returning guests, or you reach guests through your own channels (Instagram, a newsletter, the cards in the room).
• Stay mostly on a platform ifyou are just starting and have no reviews yet: the platform's visibility is then worth more than the commission.
• Choose both ifyou want to keep the platform's calendar and your site's calendar in step. An iCal link does that: a booking on the platform blocks that date on your own site, and the other way round.

What such a site must hold is on our page about a direct booking website. The link with the platforms' calendars is under booking system for your website. If you also want to know when to advertise to which guests, read our page on a marketing agency in Bruges.

People visiting Bruges do not all speak Dutch, far from it. A site that only exists in Dutch misses most of its readers. Still, you do not have to build four languages at once. Look at who books or emails today.

If your team works in English, it is tempting to build English only. Do not drop Dutch: locals, Flemish weekend guests and Dutch visitors search in it, and your Google Business Profile reviews come largely in Dutch. Each language gets its own version with its own titles, which Google links with hreflang. How to maintain that without double work is on our page about multilingual website development. An automatic translate button is not a language version: Google does not see that translation, and a German guest searching in German does not find you.

Not every Bruges business lets rooms. For a shop or a restaurant the site turns on other things: opening hours that are right on public holidays, a menu you can read as text and not as a photo, a reservation that is confirmed at once, and a place on Google Maps with the right photos. What a restaurant site needs is on the page restaurant website. You set up your Google profile with the guide create a Google Business Profile.

The city also supports traders directly. With the grant for retail and hospitality a new business in the main shopping area can get 5,000 euros, a neighbourhood shop outside the centre 10,000 euros, and for premises on the vacancy list up to 10,000 euros comes on top. The grant is for starting or expanding the business, not explicitly for a website, but whoever opens a shop also needs a findable site on opening day. In 2025 about 8 percent of the shop units in Bruges stood empty; a new business in such a unit stands out if it is ready online before the first customer walks in. Check the conditions with the city before you sign for premises, and read in website grants in Belgium which support exists in Flanders.

• A site that works on wifi and not on 4GA tourist searches in the street. A home page of 8 MB then takes ten seconds. Test your own site with the website speed test; how to make it faster is in improve website speed.
• The price only by emailA guest compares three places. Whoever shows no price drops out.
• A calendar that lags behindTwo bookings on the same night cost you a review. Let the calendars of platform and site update each other.
• Photos without textGoogle does not read a menu as a photo, and nor does a guest with a translation app.

Our office is on the Sint-Baafsplein in Ghent, 53 kilometres from Bruges: 44 minutes by car, or about 25 minutes by train from Gent-Sint-Pieters to Brugge. We do the first meeting at your place, in English or Dutch, so we see your guesthouse or your shop. Then we build on a test address, with the calendar, the prices and the languages you need, and put the site live when you give the go-ahead.

After the first meeting you get a fixed price per project; a custom site starts from 1,500 euros. More on how we build is at website design, and the full cases are on Villa Lidia and No.4 Lange Ast. If you have a business at the coast, also look at web design in Ostend, and for the rest of the province at web design in West Flanders.