Websites for holiday lets, cottages and B&Bs.
// cottages · B&Bs · glamping · guest houses · farm stays
// free first draft · sites from £600 · hosting £25/mo
Every booking that comes through Airbnb or Booking.com costs you fifteen to twenty per cent, and the guest belongs to the platform, not to you. A site of your own does not replace those listings; it catches the guest who found you there, searched your name to see if they could book direct, and saved the commission for both of you.
It also catches the searches the platforms don't own: "dog friendly cottage Dartmoor", "B&B near Salcombe with parking", "glamping South Devon hot tub". A page for each of those, real photos of the rooms and the view, your availability calendar embedded, and a site that loads in August when every network on the coast is saturated. From £600, with most holiday-let sites coming in around £800.
What a holiday-let site has to do
Take the direct booking
Your existing availability calendar and booking tool (Lodgify, SuperControl, Bookalet, Airbnb's own widget, or a simple enquiry form) embedded on the page, so a guest can book without leaving and without the platform fee.
Show the place properly
Big, fast photos of every room, the garden, the walk from the door, and the view. Guests book on photos. The site handles the file sizes so they still load on a phone in a field.
Answer the questions the listing cannot
Dogs, parking, the pub within walking distance, the nearest beach, what's in the welcome basket, the check-in routine. The things you type into messages twenty times a season, written once.
Rank for the trip, not just the name
"Dog friendly cottage Dartmoor", "family holiday let near Bigbury", "romantic B&B South Hams". Each is a page, written for the guest who searched it, and each one is a booking the platforms would have charged you for.
Work in August
When the visitors are here, the networks are full. A site that is a few fast files rather than a heavy booking-engine template loads when everyone else's spins.
// what one looks like
Built for businesses like yours.
Sites built for holiday lets and B&Bs around here. Yours would start the same way: a chat, whatever you've already got, and a working draft within days.
// questions
The questions holiday lets and B&Bs ask first.
- I get all my bookings from Airbnb. Isn't a website pointless?
- Keep the listing; it's where a lot of first-time guests will find you. The site is for the ones who search your name to book direct, and for repeat guests who would rather not pay the fee. A single direct booking a month usually covers the hosting for the year.
- How does availability stay in sync?
- Through the booking tool you already use, embedded on the page. Most of them sync with Airbnb and Booking.com calendars, so a booking anywhere blocks the dates everywhere. If you don't use one yet, the first chat is a good time to pick one.
- Can you write the local guide pages?
- I'll build them and structure them for the searches; the local knowledge is yours. Send me the walks, the pubs, the beach you'd send a friend to, however rough, and I'll turn it into pages. That's usually the part guests read most.
Wherever you are: the towns I work in, and everywhere in between.