A website for your guesthouse. Built to book direct.
The booking platforms are very good at filling your rooms. They are also taking somewhere between a tenth and a fifth of every night they fill, and they are not going to stop.
£570, paid once+1 346 883 1914
The short version
A guesthouse website has one job: turn the guest the platform introduced you to into one who books direct next time. Every room shown, rates that match the listing, arrival explained, and a reason to skip the middleman.
Most guests find a guesthouse on a booking platform and then look it up before they commit. That second visit is your one chance. If your own site is worse than the listing they just left, they go back and book there, and a share of the stay goes to somebody else.
Everything below is what we build into a guesthouse site for that reason, and why. None of it means leaving the platforms. It means not paying them for the guests they did not find you.
What a direct booking is actually worth.
A direct booking is worth the commission you would otherwise have paid on it, which is usually somewhere between a tenth and a fifth of the room rate. Airbnb, for example, says most hosts on its host-only fee pay 15.5% of each booking, and the rest typically pay 14% to 16% (Airbnb Help Centre, 2026). Other platforms set their own rates, and your contract may differ.
Put it in plain numbers. On every 100 a guest pays for a room, somewhere between 10 and 20 never reaches you. It repeats for every night, every guest, every year.
Check your own rate rather than taking any range on trust - it is on your statement. Then multiply it by the nights you sold last year. That figure is the honest argument for a guesthouse website, and for most guesthouses it is larger than the site costs several times over.
They own the guest’s email address.
You own it, and can write to them next spring.
Commission on every night, forever.
Paid once for the site, then nothing.
A booking link of your own, next to theirs.
Google can show a property’s own booking link beside the platforms’ links, free of charge. Google launched free hotel booking links on its travel pages in 2021, brought them to Search and Maps in 2022, and let eligible individual hotels enter their rates through their Business Profile (Google, 2022). Whether your guesthouse qualifies depends on Google’s rules, so check your own profile.
A direct link needs somewhere worth landing. If it opens a page with no rooms and no rates, the guest goes back to the platform they already trust. If it opens a page as clear as the listing, the booking stays with you.
The rates have to agree, too. Google tells properties to check that the price shown in search matches the price guests see on the booking site (Google Hotel Center Help, 2026). A direct rate that disagrees with the listing reads as a mistake, not a bargain. For the rest of the profile, see what to fill in on Google.
Try this now
Search your guesthouse by name on your phone. Note every link that appears beside your listing, and where each one sends a guest who taps it.
Every room, honestly photographed.
Every room you let gets its own photographs, its own description and its rate - including the small one at the back that you are slightly embarrassed about. Somebody travelling alone on a budget is looking for exactly that room, and hiding it does not sell the better ones.
Say what is actually in the room: bed size, a private or shared bathroom, stairs, whether there is a view of anything. The complaints that damage a small guesthouse are rarely about the room itself. They are about the room not being what somebody expected.
Accurate rooms also make reviews easier to ask for. A guest whose stay matched the page is the one happy to write a line about it - there is more on asking for reviews in the journal.
Try this now
Read your own room descriptions as though you had paid for the stay and just walked in. Anything a guest could reasonably feel misled about is a review waiting to be written.
Getting here, and getting in.
A guesthouse website should get the guest to the door, and through it, without a phone call. That means directions from the station, the airport and the main road, with the last hundred yards described in words. A small guesthouse is usually the hardest part of any journey to find.
Parking, plainly: where, whether it is yours, whether it is free. Then check-in and check-out times, what happens if a train is late, and whether there is somewhere to leave bags.
Finish with the house rules that matter: children, dogs, whether breakfast is included and until when. These are the questions that otherwise arrive as messages at eleven at night. If yours come in on WhatsApp, a few saved replies will answer most of them.
The guest who books direct the second time is the one the first stay earned.
What a guesthouse’s site comes with.
Four to five pages, built for the way your customers actually arrive - written for this trade, not adapted from a template someone else used. The pages we would build are Home, Rooms, Getting here and Your stay.
- Rooms, rates, and what is included
- Book direct, with no commission
- Photos of every room you let
- Check-in times and house rules
- Directions from the station or airport
All of it for £570, paid once. Analytics, Search Console and your Google listing connected, hosting free, and you own the site. There is no monthly fee and nothing here is an upgrade.
What to have ready.
None of this has to be polished. It has to be accurate, because a guesthouse trades on not surprising anybody.
- Every room you let: name, bed, bathroom, rate, what is included.
- Photographs of each room, plus the breakfast room and the outside.
- Check-in and check-out times, and what happens when a train is late.
- Your house rules: children, dogs, smoking, parking.
- Where a direct booking should land - your own inbox, or a system you already use.
- The rates you show on each platform, so the site can match them.
0 of 6 checked
Anything left unticked is a question we would have asked anyway. Sending it up front is what turns a three-week build into a one-week one.
Questions guesthouses and B&Bs ask.
Should I come off the booking platforms?
No. They are very good at finding you guests who have never heard of you, and that is worth paying for. The website is for the second booking, and for the guest who is looking you up before they commit - that is the one you should not be paying commission on.
How much commission do booking platforms take?
It depends on the platform and your contract, so check your own statement. As one example, Airbnb says most hosts on its host-only fee pay 15.5% of each booking, and the rest typically pay between 14% and 16%.
Can the site take payment or a deposit?
It can take the booking request and send it wherever you want it. Taking card payments is a paid extra with its own costs, so we tell you what it adds before we build. Plenty of small guesthouses take a card number by phone and are fine.
Can I show which rooms are free?
If you use a channel manager or booking system, the site can point at it so availability stays in one place. Without one, a line you update yourself - “three rooms free this weekend” - does most of the same work and costs nothing.
When you pay, why hosting is free, what happens if you want changes later - those are answered on the home page.
