More direct bookings. Less commission.
A proper website for your guest house, B&B or small hotel.
The idea
Booking.com and Airbnb are useful. They bring you guests. But when someone finds your website, they should be able to book directly with you.
I’m Stephen. I live in Largs. These sites are for independent places to stay along this coast, built around your property, your rooms and your location.
I’ll put a booking calendar on the site so guests can check dates and book with you there. The one I use is called Freetobook. If you already have a calendar on your own site that does this, we’ll use that.
You keep the booking. You don’t pay Booking.com commission on it.
You don’t need to leave Booking.com or Airbnb. Keep them doing what they’re good at. Your own site just has to take the booking when someone comes to you.
Built around the property
Your place should look like your place.
I’m not interested in giving every B&B the same hotel template with a different logo at the top.
I’ll build the site around the character of your property. That includes individual room pages, photography, information guests actually want before booking, and useful local pages that give people another reason to find your website in the first place.
If you need new photographs, I’ll arrange a local photographer. If you’d like, we can make a short film about the place too.
The result should feel like your place on the internet, not a page you happen to own.
The price
£1,950. The lot.
One property. Usually four to six weeks.
Half to start, half when the site goes live.
You get
- A complete website on your own domain
- Individual room pages, written in your voice
- A booking calendar on the site, so guests can book with you
- Local photography
- A short film, if you want one
- Useful pages about the surrounding area
- A site built to work well on phones
After launch, I can host and look after it for £45 a month.
That’s optional. The website is yours.
Booking.com and Airbnb
They can still do their job.
You don’t need to choose between Booking.com and your own website. They are good at putting your place in front of people who have never heard of you.
Your website has a different job. It gives people who find you directly a reason to stay, look around and book with you.
Straight talking
A couple of things I won’t promise.
- I won’t promise that a new website will magically put you at the top of Google.
- I won’t tell you to leave Booking.com or Airbnb.
- I won’t pretend a website replaces the customers those platforms can bring you.
What I will do is give you a much better place to send people who find you directly, and a way for those people to book without handing a chunk of the booking to somebody else.
The Clyde coast
I work locally.
Largs · Fairlie · West Kilbride · Skelmorlie · Millport · Wemyss Bay
That’s deliberate. I want to visit the property, see the rooms, understand the place and know the area I’m writing about.
I’m not building 200 hotel websites across Britain. I’m building a handful of good ones here.
That’s the walk. I’m not taking on Ayr.
Start with your current site
I’ll tell you what I’d change.
If you already have a website, send it over. I’ll have a look and tell you where I think it is helping, where it is getting in the way, and what I would do differently.