Hotel website design for direct bookings
I design hotel websites around one goal: a guest who lands on your site should be able to see the rooms, understand where you are, trust your policies and ask about dates, all on a phone, without being sent back to a booking site.
How I lay out a hotel site
In the order guests ask their questions.
The first screen
Your hotel's name, the town, one strong photo and two buttons: check availability and WhatsApp. No slider, no autoplay video.
Rooms
Each room type as a card with a photo, the bed type, who it sleeps and a starting rate, leading to its own page.
Location
Where you are in relation to things guests know, how to get there and a map link that opens at your gate.
Facilities and food
What's included, what costs extra, meal plans and anything families or older guests will ask about.
Reviews and policies
A link to your Google reviews, then check-in, cancellation and ID rules in plain words.
What goes on each room page
The page that most often decides the booking.
Photos in order
The bed, the view, the bathroom, then the details. Daylight, curtains open, no heavy filters.
The facts
Size, beds, maximum guests, extra beds, the view, floor and whether there is a lift.
In the room
Heating or air conditioning, hot water, Wi-Fi, TV, kettle, workspace, balcony, accessibility features.
The ask
A starting rate with its dates and a button that opens WhatsApp or your booking engine for this room.
Beautiful and fast at the same time
Hotel sites are where heavy design does the most damage. Full-screen sliders, background videos and galleries of uncompressed photos look impressive on the designer's computer and make guests wait on a phone. Many guests are checking your site on mobile data, sometimes while travelling.
I keep the look rich and the weight low: photos cut to the size each screen shows and saved as AVIF or WebP, galleries that load as the guest scrolls, and maps or videos that only load when tapped. The result still looks like a hotel worth staying in, and it opens quickly enough that the guest stays to see it. My speed optimisation page explains the method.
If you want to edit rates and offers yourself, I build on WordPress and keep the plugin list short. If you'd rather send me changes, a plain HTML site is faster still. Either way, the site is set up for hotel SEO from the start.
More for hotels
Questions about hotel website design
Which booking engine should I use?
If you already use a channel manager, use the booking engine that comes with it, so the rooms you sell on your site and on booking sites come from the same availability. If you don't, start with enquiries on WhatsApp and email, and add a booking engine once you know direct bookings are worth it.
How many photos does each room need?
Enough to show the bed, the view from the window, the bathroom and the size of the room, which is usually five or six good ones. Photos taken in daylight with the curtains open sell better than many dark ones. I resize them all so the page stays quick on a phone.
Should the home page have a video?
Only if it loads when someone taps it. An autoplaying video at the top of the page makes a hotel site slow on mobile data, which is how many guests will open it. A strong photo with a play button gives you both.
Want a hotel site guests book from?
Send me your room list, a few photos and your current site if you have one. I'll sketch how the pages would work and give you the price.