Websites for hotels and B&Bs
Hotel website design that turns lookers into direct bookings
A page for every room, photos that show what guests get, a booking button that reads the same calendar as Booking.com and Airbnb, and a site that ranks when someone searches for a stay in your town.
Guests find you on Booking.com, then search your name
Plenty of guests who spot a guesthouse on Booking.com search for its name before they book. If they land on a slow site with three photos and an email address, they go back and book through the platform, and you pay commission on a guest who had already found you.
Small hotel website design is about keeping that guest. The site shows what the room is like, what breakfast is and what the stay costs, and lets them book in a few taps on a phone. Boutique hotel website design follows the same rule: a boutique hotel in York and a four-room B&B in the Cotswolds both need a site that does the selling and the booking, not a brochure.
Below you will find which pages a hotel site carries, how SEO for hotels works in your own town, how the booking button stays in step with the platforms, which UK rules apply to a site that takes bookings, and what it costs.
The job of a hotel or B&B website
A hotel site has three jobs at once. It gets found by people searching for a stay in your town or area, it convinces them with pictures and clear prices, and it takes the booking without selling the same room twice. What can run behind the site, from a room board for housekeeping to a breakfast list with allergies flagged, is on hotel software for small hotels and B&Bs.
We build that site beside the booking platforms, not against them. Booking.com and Airbnb bring overseas guests who would never find you otherwise. Your own site is for the guest who comes back, the walker who heard of you from friends and the wedding party that wants eight rooms. On every booking through your own site, no commission goes out. Which platform pays off for which guest is weighed up in Airbnb vs Booking for hosts, and what makes guests book direct is set out on direct booking website.
Top of the map in Whitby, booked on your own site
New booking
Room 3, 2 nights, 2 adults, dairy-free breakfast
James, Leeds, today 21:14
- A page per room with photos, price and what is included
- A Google profile with the right category and recent photos
- A booking module that reads the same calendar as Booking.com and Airbnb
An example of what we can build, with made-up guesthouses and reviews.
SEO for hotels starts with the town and the kind of stay
Guests search by place and type of stay: B&B Whitby, boutique hotel York, dog friendly guesthouse Lake District. A site with a page per room, a page about the area and the right words in titles and copy picks up those searches. Your Google profile weighs just as heavily: anyone searching on the map sees three places with photos and stars before any website. How to set it up is in create a Google Business Profile, and choosing the right category is in Google Business Profile categories.
Reviews count for more in accommodation than in almost any other trade. Ask for one after every stay, with a link that opens the review window straight away: make it with the Google review link generator, and read more in get more Google reviews. If you want to rank higher in your own area, there is local SEO.
Overseas guests read your site in their own language. A multilingual website in English, French and German is no luxury for a guesthouse: a guest from Lyon or Cologne books where they understand the terms. Each language gets its own pages, so Google shows them in that language too.
Six pages a hotel site carries
Each one answers a question a guest asks before they book.
A page for every room
Bed, size, bathroom, view and how many it sleeps, with photos of that room and not just the best one.
Availability and booking
Free nights per room, the price with what is included, and a booking or request in a few taps.
Breakfast and extras
What is on the table and until when, plus what guests can add: bike storage, a packed lunch, an EV charger.
The area
Walks, the coast path, the town and where to eat. Guests search for the area, not just your name.
Groups and weddings
A wedding party, a walking group or a company away day: a request with dates, rooms and wishes.
Practical details and terms
Check-in and check-out, cancellation, parking and dogs, so you stop answering the same email every week.
Room 4 sold twice, and the board sorts it
The board spotted a problem
Room 4 is sold twice on Friday: one guest from Booking.com and one from Airbnb, because the Airbnb calendar only refreshed hours later.
The board closes room 4 on every channel and moves the Airbnb guest to room 2, the same type and free on Friday. The guest gets a message with the new room.
Fixed: Guest moved to room 2
An example of what we can build, with made-up rooms and bookings. You choose what the board checks.
A booking button on the same calendar as the platforms
The biggest risk of direct booking is a room that has already gone. So the booking engine on your site reads the same availability as the platforms. For a B&B with a few rooms, iCal is often enough: each platform publishes a link with the booked nights and reads the other's. It is free but slow, because each platform fetches the calendar on its own schedule. That is why we let guests on your site send a request you confirm first, or link the site to your channel manager once you have more rooms. Which fits how many rooms is on bed and breakfast booking software and booking system for your website.
Payment, deposits and a site that loads fast on a phone
Guests pay on your site with what they know: card, Apple Pay and Google Pay for UK guests, and the local methods for guests from the continent, which you find in payment methods in Europe. You set the deposit for a group and full payment for late cancellations yourself.
The site also has to be quick on a phone. Most guests look on the train or on the sofa in the evening, and a page full of heavy photos that takes five seconds to load loses them. Check your current site with the website speed test and see what helps in improve website speed.
Booked through a platform or through your own site
Both have their place. The difference is in what you pay and what you know about the guest.
- Who finds the guest
- Booking through Booking.com or AirbnbThe platform, including guests from abroad
- Booking through your own siteYou, through Google, your profile and word of mouth
- What you pay
- Booking through Booking.com or AirbnbCommission or service fees on every booking
- Booking through your own siteThe fees of your payment provider
- What you know about the guest
- Booking through Booking.com or AirbnbWhat the platform passes on
- Booking through your own siteName, email, language and wishes, as you ask for them
- Next year
- Booking through Booking.com or AirbnbThe guest books through the platform again
- Booking through your own siteYou can invite the guest yourself, with their consent
Let the platforms bring new guests. Make sure the ones who already know you book direct.
UK rules for a site that takes bookings
A site where guests book and pay falls under more rules than an ordinary business site. These are the ones we build into every hotel site. If in doubt, your solicitor or accountant decides, not this table.
| Rule | What it asks | How the site handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Prices for guests | Under the CMA's price transparency guidance, the price you show includes mandatory fees, taxes and charges, with no fees dripped in at checkout | A price per night with VAT, breakfast stated as included or extra |
| VAT on rooms | Accommodation is standard-rated at 20 percent once you are VAT registered | The right rate in the booking engine and on the confirmation |
| Short-term lets register | A mandatory national registration scheme for short-term lets in England is expected to begin in March 2027 | Room for your number on the site and in each confirmation |
| Accessibility | The Equality Act 2010 makes an inaccessible site a legal risk for any business | Readable contrast, keyboard use and text with every photo |
| Privacy | You explain what you keep about guests in a privacy policy, under UK GDPR | A policy per language and a retention period per type of data |
| Cookies | Since 5 February 2026 some analytics cookies run without consent in the UK; advertising cookies still need it | A banner where refusing is as easy as accepting, only where it is needed |
Read more in UK website accessibility law, do I need a privacy policy and UK cookie law.
Where hotel websites lose direct bookings
When we look over the sites of B&Bs and small hotels, we keep finding the same gaps. They are rarely expensive to close.
| What we see | What it costs you | What we build |
|---|---|---|
| A Booking.com link as the booking button | Commission on guests you had already won | A booking engine of your own on the same calendar |
| A room page with no price | The guest compares elsewhere and books there | A price per night with what is included |
| English only | French and German guests give up | A site in your guests' languages |
| Photos five years old, or of another room | Disappointment and a poor review | Recent photos for every room |
| A slow site on a phone | Guests searching on the move are gone | Light images and fast pages |
| No review request after the stay | Too few stars on the map | An email after check-out with a direct link |
What a site costs in the UK is set out in website cost UK. If you want the site to do more than take bookings, such as a room board or a breakfast list, it becomes a web application or custom software.
Eight rooms for a wedding, with the rooming list online
The organiser fills in the rooming list through a secure link and sees what has been paid. Other guests' details stay in the record.
An example of what we can build, with a made-up family and amounts.
Weddings and groups through a form of their own
A group rarely books with a button. A wedding party, a walking club or a company on an away day wants a price for eight rooms, a meeting room and breakfast at seven. On most hotel sites that ends in a general contact form and a week of emails.
A group form asks for what you need straight away: dates, rooms and guests, the occasion, allergies and whether a room or a meal is needed. The request lands in a record with the quote and the deposit, and the organiser fills in the rooming list later through a secure link. If you work with a caterer or an events company, their side sits in the same record; what that looks like for them is on software for caterers and software for event companies. If you serve food you prepare and pack yourself, check the labelling rules in Natasha's Law.
A fixed price, from EUR 1,500
FromEUR 1,500
A website for a hotel or B&B with your rooms, your area and a request or booking form starts from 1,500 euros. After a conversation you get a fixed price for your project. Four choices decide where it lands:
- Number of rooms and languagesThree rooms in English take less than twenty rooms in four languages.
- Request or booking with paymentA request you confirm is simpler than a booking with payment and a deposit.
- Link to your calendariCal with the platforms or a link to your channel manager, depending on what your system allows.
- Photos and copySupply recent photos yourself or have them made. Good room photos sell more than any copy.
Ready before the season starts
- A conversation about your houseHow many rooms, which platforms, which guests and which languages. We look at where you lose bookings now.
- Rooms, photos and copyThe right pictures and details for each room, plus the pages about the area and your breakfast.
- Booking and linksThe booking engine on your calendar, card and wallet payments, and your Google profile in order.
- Live and fine-tunedAfter the first weeks we check which pages guests find and where they drop off. To talk it through, use contact or see website design.
We have no hotel as a client yet; we did build a calendar fed by the Airbnb and Booking iCal with a request form for the holiday house No.4 Lange Ast, and a site with an availability calendar for Villa Lidia in Umbria.
Website design
How VBS helps you with this
We build your site from design to copy, imagery and code, in one team, so that Google and your buyers find it and get in touch.
- Design and copy built on your buyers' questions
- Fast, multilingual when you need it, at a fixed price
- Forms, cookieless analytics and hosting on AWS
How we approach it is on our page about Website design.
More guests booking direct?
Tell us how many rooms you have, which platforms you sell through and which languages your guests speak. We will show you where we would start.
Rather get in touch right away?