Hotel website design: commission-free direct bookings in three languages
A hotel website is the hotel's own booking channel. A guest books dates and a room without going through Booking.com or another online travel agency. Agencies charge a commission on every reservation; a booking on the hotel's own site carries none. ALTAI Digital builds hotel sites around that difference: booking engine, room and rate pages with an availability calendar, content in Dutch, German and English. The FAQ is backed by WhatsApp and a chatbot, and the site is linked to the Google Business Profile. Delivery takes four weeks.
For a hotel, the website starts with a different calculation from most businesses. Booking.com and Airbnb put the hotel in front of guests and take a commission on every reservation they pass on. A booking made on the hotel's own site carries no commission: same room, same night, same guest, and the full rate stays with the hotel. The site is therefore not a brochure; it is a second sales channel that runs alongside the agencies. A guest who has seen the hotel on an agency and types its name into Google lands on the site. If there is no way to book there, they go back to the agency and the commission is paid again.
Dutch coastal and city hotels host guests who speak German, Dutch and English. A Dutch-only site is invisible to a German family searching for a room on the coast and unreadable to a British couple in Rotterdam. Room types, rates and an availability calendar have to be visible on the site in each language. A guest who leaves the site to find a price finishes the booking on the agency. ALTAI Digital builds each room page with photos, capacity, rate and calendar in all three languages; the guest picks the room, enters the dates and sends the request.
The questions guests ask most before they book are well known: check-in and check-out times, parking, breakfast, pets and the cancellation policy. If those answers are not written on the site, reception answers the same e-mails and calls every day. The site gets a written FAQ. The same answers feed a WhatsApp line and a chatbot, so a midnight question does not wait for the morning shift. The Google Business Profile is the hotel's listing on Google Maps. It is linked to the site, so a guest who finds the hotel on the map reaches the booking page in one tap.
Below is the scope of a hotel site build, the four-week process and the questions we are asked most. We work from Rotterdam and Istanbul. The site is coded from scratch in Next.js; domain and hosting are registered in the hotel's name and the source code belongs to the hotel. The booking form collects personal data, so a GDPR privacy notice is part of the build. Pricing is given after the discovery call, once the number of rooms and languages is clear.
What goes wrong today
- 01
Every booking pays a commission
The agency is the only sales channel. A guest who finds the site sees photos but no booking button, goes back to the agency and books there. The hotel pays commission on a reservation it could have taken itself.
- 02
Rooms, rates and calendar are not on the site
The site shows room photos but no rates and no free dates. The guest leaves to find a price, finishes the booking on the agency and the hotel that paid for the site loses the sale.
- 03
Dutch only, German and British guests lost
A coastal hotel with German, Dutch and British guests has a Dutch-only site. German searches do not find it; British guests find it, cannot read the cancellation policy and book on the agency instead.
- 04
The same five questions every day
Check-in time, parking, breakfast, pets and cancellation are not written anywhere on the site. Reception answers the same questions by phone and e-mail every day; a message sent at night waits until the morning.
- 05
Business Profile and site do not match
The Google listing has an old phone number and no website link, or a link to the wrong page. A guest who finds the hotel on the map cannot reach the booking page; the only remaining route is the phone.
- 06
Pages that are slow on a phone
Room photos are uploaded at full size, so the page loads slowly on a phone and the guest leaves before reaching the calendar. Old templates do not resize images and bury the booking form at the bottom of the page.
Scope of the build
Direct booking engine
The guest selects a date range, a room type and the number of guests. The request lands in WhatsApp or e-mail and reception confirms with one tap. The confirmation goes to the guest by e-mail. The availability calendar is kept in an admin screen and sold dates are closed. No commission is paid on any of it.
Room and rate pages
One page per room type: photos, capacity, bed layout, amenities, nightly rate and the availability calendar. Rates are changed in the admin screen and seasonal rates are entered separately. The guest sees the price on the site without opening an agency.
Dutch, German and English
Three languages are published in the same build; room pages, the booking engine and the FAQ work in each. Language tags are set so that a German search returns the German page. A fourth language is added to the same structure if needed.
FAQ, WhatsApp line and chatbot
Check-in and check-out times, parking, breakfast, pets and the cancellation policy are written on the site. The same answers feed the WhatsApp line and the chatbot on the site. A guest gets an answer outside office hours and a booking request is passed to reception.
Google Business Profile connection
The hotel's Google listing is linked to the site; address, phone, photos and reviews are maintained from one source. Hotel schema (room types, price range, location, amenities) is written into the page. A guest who finds the hotel on the map reaches the booking page in one tap.
Photo layout
Room and property photos sit on the relevant room page rather than in a separate gallery. The guest sees the photo, the rate and the calendar on one screen. Photos are resized on upload so pages stay light on a phone.
Speed, phone layout and the GDPR notice
Pages are coded from scratch in Next.js and open in under three seconds on a phone. The booking form collects name, phone and e-mail, so a GDPR privacy notice is attached to the form. The guest reads why the data is collected before sending it.
How the build runs
- 01
Discovery (1 week)
Room types, rates, photos and the current booking flow are collected. The agency listing, the current site and the Business Profile are measured and the languages are decided.
- 02
Design and writing (2 weeks)
Room pages are written and the booking engine and calendar are set up. Three languages are prepared, the FAQ is written and an interim preview is shared.
- 03
Corrections and launch (1 week)
Corrections are applied and domain and hosting are registered in the hotel's name. The GDPR notice is attached to the form and the site goes live.
- 04
Connection and measurement
Search Console and the Business Profile are connected and pages are submitted for indexing. The WhatsApp line and chatbot are switched on; a measurement report follows at the end of month one.
Hotel site, three languages
- Home, one page per room type, booking, FAQ, location and contact
- Direct booking engine and availability calendar
- WhatsApp line and chatbot connection
- Content in Dutch, German and English
- Google Business Profile and Search Console connection
- GDPR privacy notice and booking form
- Domain and hosting in the hotel's name
Pricing is given after the discovery call, once the scope is clear.
Products used in this build
Online booking and scheduling
Online booking for clinics, salons and hotels; reminders and cancellation handling close the empty slot.
AI chatbot and voice receptionist
It greets customers on your site and on the phone, answers what it has a source for, and hands the rest to a person.
WhatsApp Business integration
Notifications, order tracking and customer conversations gather in the business account; the history stays with the company.
Web and mobile development
Code written from scratch: web with Next.js, mobile with React Native and Swift; the repository is yours from day one.
Terms used on this page
- Direct booking
- A reservation a guest makes on the hotel's own website rather than through an online travel agency, on which the hotel pays no commission.
- Online travel agency (OTA)
- A platform such as Booking.com or Airbnb that lists the hotel to its audience and charges a commission on every reservation it passes on.
- Booking engine
- The part of the site that takes dates, room type and guest count, checks availability and drops the request into WhatsApp or e-mail.
- Google Business Profile
- The hotel's listing on Google Maps and in search, carrying address, phone, photos and reviews, maintained from one source once linked to the site.
- Privacy notice
- The GDPR-required text that tells a guest, before the booking form is sent, which personal data is collected, why, and for how long.
hotel websiteFrequently asked questions
Four weeks: one for discovery, two for design and writing, one for corrections and launch. If room photos and the rate list arrive in week one, the schedule holds.
Yes. A booking made on the hotel's own site is not passed through an agency, so no agency commission is due on it. Booking.com and Airbnb charge commission only on reservations that come through their own platforms. The site is built alongside the agencies, not instead of them.
Yes. The site does not replace the agency. It gives the guest who saw the hotel there and searched for its name a commission-free way to book. The number of bookings the site brings in is shown in the month-one report.
The request lands in WhatsApp or e-mail; reception confirms with one tap and the guest receives a confirmation e-mail. Sold dates are closed in the calendar. In the basic build no payment is taken on the site. A hotel that wants a card deposit gets a payment link added to the scope during discovery.
What is written on the site: check-in and check-out times, parking, breakfast, pets and the cancellation policy. Questions the site does not cover are not answered with a guess; the guest is handed to the WhatsApp line or to reception. A booking request is passed to reception with dates and room type.
During discovery we look at any booking software the hotel already uses; if it can be connected, the calendar is maintained from one source. If not, availability is kept in the admin screen by hand and a sold date is closed in both places. Which route to take is decided on the discovery call.
We measure first: speed, phone layout, and whether rates and a booking route are on the site. If a booking engine and calendar cannot be added to the existing structure, rewriting is faster than repairing. The decision is made on the discovery call.
Pricing depends on the number of room types, languages and the booking scope and is given after the discovery call. Quotes are in euros for the Netherlands and in pounds sterling for the UK. The scope of the three-language hotel site is listed in the package above.
The process first, the proposal after
In a short discovery call we map the process together and tell you plainly whether it is worth automating. If it is not, we say that too.
30 minutes · no preparation needed
