Booking.com takes a fifth of every night. Your website is supposed to be the way around that.
Independent properties live in a squeeze: the OTAs deliver guests and take 15-25% for the introduction. The only exit is a website good enough that guests book direct — which means real photography, a live booking engine, and a reason to skip the middleman. We build exactly that.
Here's the pattern every independent property knows: the guest finds you on Booking.com, then googles your name to check you out. That brand search is the single highest-intent moment in hospitality — and it lands on your website. If the site looks worse than your OTA listing and can't show a live rate, the guest shrugs and books through the platform. Commission paid, guest data lost, relationship rented.
A direct-booking site flips that moment. Best-rate messaging, a booking engine two taps deep, photography that out-sells the OTA gallery, and the property's actual story — the things platforms flatten out of every listing. Properties that fix this typically shift meaningful share to direct within a season, and every shifted booking is pure recovered margin.
The four ways hotel websites lose money
We've audited hundreds of independent property sites. The same problems show up over and over — and every one of them costs you a customer who was ready to pay.
Loses the brand-name search
The guest who googles your property's name is already half-booked — and the dated site loses them back to the OTA, commission and all.
No live rates or booking
A site that can't answer 'how much, what's free Saturday?' isn't a booking channel; it's a brochure funding Booking.com's margin.
OTA photos beat your own site
The platforms force decent photos; most property sites run worse ones. The OTA listing out-selling your own site is the squeeze in one image.
No reason to book direct
Same price, same photos, less booking convenience — why would anyone skip the platform? Direct needs a visible advantage: rate, perk, flexibility, or all three.
The vibe we'd build for a independent property
An independent inn loses 18% of every OTA booking. The site's vibe has to out-charm Booking.com: deep harbor teal, brass, linen — a place with a story, and a book-direct reason on every page.
Built for how a independent property actually wins work
One mission: win the brand search and convert it direct. Every element serves the booking engine.
Booking engine, front and center
Cloudbeds, Mews, SiteMinder, ThinkReservations or yours — live rates and availability two taps from any page.
Best-rate-direct messaging
The skip-the-middleman case made explicitly: rate match, perks, flexible cancellation. The guest needs a reason; we print it.
Photography that out-sells the OTA
Rooms, property, and neighborhood presented full-bleed and honest — better than the platform gallery, because it has to be.
Room and rate pages that rank
Each room type a real page with schema markup, catching the long-tail searches the OTAs currently own for you.
The property's actual story
History, hosts, neighborhood, character — the differentiators platforms flatten, restored. Independents win on being somewhere specific.
Local area guide
What's walkable, what's worth the drive, when to come — content that ranks for destination searches and sells the stay, not just the room.
Old site gone, new site live, in 7 days.
Audit & quote
60-minute call. We tell you exactly what's broken and lock a fixed price before you hang up.
Design + copy + SEO
You watch the real site take shape in the browser. We write the copy and wire the schema.
You review, we polish
One round of revisions, applied the same day. No tickets. No project-manager relay.
Launch — you keep the keys
Your domain, your hosting, your code. No platform lock-in, no retainer, no hostage situation.
Hotels, Motels & Inns websites, built market by market
Everything happens over a call and a shared screen — no office visit, no markup for geography. These are the markets we focus on:
Before you call
Can you integrate our property management system?
Almost certainly — Cloudbeds, Mews, SiteMinder, ThinkReservations, ResNexus, Little Hotelier and most PMSs offer embeddable booking engines or hosted booking pages we wire in seamlessly. The guest stays in your brand from first click to confirmation. If you're still on phone-and-ledger, we'll recommend honestly the lightest system that fits.
The OTAs bring us most of our guests. Why fight them?
Don't fight them — bill them less. The OTAs are a marketing channel; the website's job is converting the guests they introduce into direct bookers the second time, and winning the brand-name searches the first time. Even shifting twenty bookings a month to direct recovers serious annual margin at typical commission rates.
We're a small family property. Is this overkill?
Small properties have the most to gain — commission hurts more at twelve rooms than at two hundred, and character is your entire competitive edge. A site that tells the property's real story and books direct is the one investment that compounds nightly. The fixed price is the same whether you have six rooms or sixty.
What does it cost, exactly?
Three fixed packages: $1,500 for a 5-page rebuild in 7 days, $5,000 for up to 20 pages with a blog and integrations in 14 days, and $15,000+ for 100+ page builds. The quote we send before you sign is the number on the final invoice — no scope-creep charges, ever.
Ready to bulldoze your independent property's website?
Tell us your domain. We'll send a brutal audit of what's broken, with a fixed quote to fix it. No sales call required.