Having a hotel website built: costs, options and what to watch for

Having a hotel website built costs roughly 0 to 25,000 euros, and that enormous spread says exactly what matters: not the price of the site determines the ROI, but whether the guest can book and pay directly on it.

The problem

Say you have 6 rooms and you're currently doing 72 percent through Booking.com. Your site exists, built in 2019 by a cousin who works in IT, but guests can't book on it. They call, email, or click through to Booking anyway. Every month you see well over 1,000 euros in commission go out and you think: I'd rather have kept that.

You know your site is behind. But as soon as you dig into it, you're in a jungle of prices. One party asks 800 euros, another 12,000, and a platform promises it for 19 euros per month. Who's right?

Nobody and everybody. A website is not a fixed product with a fixed price. It's a collection of choices, and the most expensive choice is not automatically the best for an accommodation your size. The real difference is not in what the site looks like, but in whether the guest can book and pay on it without dropping off. That one feature, the booking engine (the reservation system that accepts bookings and processes payment), determines whether your site is a sales channel or a nice business card.

The same confusion applies to accommodation type. Having a glamping website built, a hostel website built or a website for a B&B costs roughly the same, because the price is in the functionality, not the label. A glamping with 8 tents and a B&B with 6 rooms both need a booking engine that can handle the right units and periods. The word on the sign doesn't change that. Anyone who gets a quote that's significantly higher because it's glamping or a hostel can be skeptical about that.

The tricky part is that most accommodation owners build the site based on what it looks like, and the party building the site sells based on that same picture. A smooth photo slider and a sleek menu feel like what you're paying for. But the guest who lands on your site on Friday evening wants just one thing: to see if there's space and book in three clicks. If that doesn't work, he's back at Booking within twenty seconds. That's why the first question on every quote isn't what the site looks like, but what the guest can do on it.

Worked example

The four ways to have a hotel website built, with realistic market ranges for the Netherlands in 2026:

What this means: for a B&B, glamping or hostel up to 12 rooms, the top of that table is rarely needed. A platform or a good freelancer between 1,500 and 5,000 euros delivers a site that loads quickly, looks good and, importantly, where the guest books directly. The prices above 10,000 euros go with hotels with dozens of rooms, multiple locations or their own restaurant and events that need to be on the site. If you don't have that, you're paying for capacity you'll never use.

Watch carefully what's included in the monthly costs. With DIY and platforms, hosting and domain are often included, but the booking engine can be a separate module that costs extra per booking or per room. With a freelancer you pay hosting separately, usually 20 to 60 euros per month, and the booking engine comes on top of that. Always add three items together: the one-time build, the monthly hosting and the cost of the booking engine. A site that looks cheap in one-time cost can turn out more expensive in monthly charges.

Calculate the ROI. If you shift 15 bookings per month from Booking to your own site, at an average booking value of 120 euros and 18 percent commission, you save about 324 euros per month, or almost 3,900 euros per year. A freelancer site of 3,000 euros you pay for in just under ten months. If you only shift 5 bookings per month, it takes almost three times as long and a cheaper platform is the smarter start. So the payoff is not in the price of the site, but in how many bookings you realistically move. Calculate exactly what a shift to direct bookings brings you in the savings calculator.

Action plan

What you need before you hire someone or start yourself:

1. Determine your format and units. 6 rooms, 8 glamping tents or 30 hostel beds each require a different booking engine. Write down how many bookable units you have and whether you have different types (standard room, suite, shared dormitory). This determines what platform or connection works.

2. Choose the build model. Have time and fairly handy: DIY or a platform. Want custom work but no agency price: a freelancer. Want everything outsourced: an agency. The trade-off between WordPress, custom work and a ready-made platform is worked out in WordPress versus custom versus platform.

3. Require a booking engine in the scope. This is where most sites go wrong. Explicitly ask: can the guest book and pay on the site themselves, and what system do you use for that? What a booking engine is and which fits your accommodation type is in what is a booking engine.

4. Prepare the content. Good photos, the right text per room, your hours and your terms. A builder can deliver an empty site, but the content must come from you. What pages and functions an accommodation site minimally needs are in the essentials of a hotel website.

5. Agree on maintenance and ownership. Who does updates, who pays the hosting, and, crucially, in whose name are the domain and hosting? Make sure you own it. A site in the builder's name is lost once you part ways.

What to watch for when choosing a partner: ask for previous work for comparable accommodations, a fixed price upfront instead of an open hourly rate, and the ability to get out without a year-long contract. A good builder can show you an existing site you can actually book on yourself, not just a portfolio of nice pictures. Also ask how long the site has been live and whether the owner can easily make changes to it afterward, like prices, photos or an extra room. That says more about long-term usability than any design style.

Also plan the build outside your peak. Wanting a new site in May while the season is already running means you're working against yourself: the build needs your input for photos, texts and setting up the booking engine, and you don't have that time in peak season. The quiet months between October and March are the natural time to have a site built, so it's ready before bookings for the next season come in.

Common mistakes

• A beautiful site with no booking button. The most common and expensive mistake. You pay for design, the guest lands on your site, sees no booking option and goes back to Booking anyway. You've then spent money to maintain your OTA dependency.

• Choosing on price instead of functionality. The cheapest quote often lacks exactly the booking engine or mobile optimization. Compare what's in the scope, not just the amount at the bottom.

• Having the site built slow or not mobile-friendly. More than half of bookings start on a phone. A site that loads slowly on mobile or looks bad costs you bookings directly. How to prevent that is in speed of your hotel site.

• Skipping photos or going cheap on them. The photos sell the room. An otherwise fine site with bad photos converts poorly. What good photos deliver for your site is in photos for your hotel website.

• Not documenting who owns the site. Domain and hosting in the builder's name means you're held hostage in a conflict or if the builder stops. Establish ownership upfront.

• Expecting the site to immediately deliver bookings. A new site first needs to be found in Google. Allow for weeks to months before local visibility builds. The site is the foundation, not the whole solution.

What you can do now

Having a hotel website built is not about choosing the most expensive or cheapest option, but about the right functionality for your size. For most B&Bs, glampings and hostels up to 12 rooms, a platform or a good freelancer between 1,500 and 5,000 euros is sufficient, as long as there's a working booking engine in it.

Start with the calculation. How many bookings can you realistically shift from Booking to your own site, and what does that save per month? Calculate that in the savings calculator. That way you know within what budget a site pays for itself.

Then choose your build model. If you're torn between WordPress, custom or a platform, read WordPress versus custom versus platform. Want to first know what a site minimally needs to do, start with the essentials of a hotel website.

Rather not go through the build process yourself and want us to handle the website for your accommodation, including booking engine? We discuss that at building websites for accommodations.