Website Builder

A website builder is software that allows you to quickly create a functional, mobile-friendly, and search engine optimized website, often without needing a web developer or designer. Also called a CMS (Content Management System), it lets you manage your website content—such as pages, images, text, and videos—easily and without programming skills. This enables you to update and organize your website content quickly and affordably.

A hotel website builder is a specialised tool designed to help accommodation providers create professional, mobile-friendly websites. It includes features tailored to hospitality needs, such as online booking systems, room availability calendars, and photo galleries to showcase your property.To build an effective hotel website, you should include:

• Your name and logo to establish brand identity
• A clear website menu for easy navigation
• High-quality images of rooms and amenities to attract guests
• An ‘About Us’ page to share your story and build trust
• Contact details or a contact form for guest enquiries
• Detailed pages for each room type with descriptions and pricing
• Call-to-action buttons like “Book Now” to encourage reservations
• A FAQ section to answer common guest questions
• Secure booking and payment options for a smooth reservation process

These elements provide essential information, simplify decision-making for guests, and improve the user experience. Additionally, including relevant content helps search engines rank your site higher when travellers search for accommodations.

A simple hotel website should include essential features that help attract visitors and convert them into direct bookings. Key features include:

• User-friendly navigation with clear calls to action, such as “Book Now”
• Responsive design that works well on all devices and is optimised for search engines
• An integrated booking engine that syncs with your property management system (PMS) and allows guests to:
  • View real-time room availability
  • Select dates and room types
  • Book instantly and securely
  • Make payments using credit cards
• Support for multiple languages and currencies to accommodate international guests
• Upselling options for room upgrades, extras, and packages
• Promotions and discounts to encourage direct bookings

These features improve the guest experience, streamline the booking process, and enhance your website’s visibility in search results.

The easiest hotel website builder for beginners is one that offers ready-made templates and requires no technical skills. These builders let you launch a professional website in just a few hours, with all essential features included.

Specialised website builders like Little Hotelier are designed specifically for small accommodation providers. They offer industry best-practice templates, automatic updates, and built-in tools to help you take online bookings effortlessly.

Key features of an easy-to-use hotel website builder include:

• A custom domain name and automated web hosting
• SSL certificates for secure browsing
• Customisable templates with built-in design elements
• Search engine optimisation (SEO) automation
• Mobile optimisation
• Automatic software updates
• Integrated booking engine and secure payment solutions
• Support for multiple languages and currencies

These features allow beginners to create a fully functional, branded hotel website with minimal effort, while providing guests with a smooth booking experience.

Using a simple hotel website template offers several benefits, especially for small accommodation providers without web design experience. Key advantages include:

• Time and cost savings by eliminating the need to hire a designer or developer
• A professional, polished design that builds trust with potential guests
• User-friendly layout that allows guests to easily find key information and book directly
• Improved guest experience, which encourages repeat bookings and positive reviews
• Direct control over guest relationships, helping you build loyalty and avoid third-party commissions
• A streamlined booking process that creates a strong first impression and increases conversions

Simple hotel website templates are optimised to meet hospitality needs while being easy to set up and maintain.

The best hotel website builder for small accommodation providers depends on your specific needs, goals, and level of technical expertise. While general platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace are popular and customisable, they may require more setup and integration work.

For small accommodation businesses, using a dedicated hotel website builder is often more effective. Tools like Little Hotelier are built specifically for the hospitality industry and include all essential features, such as:

• Integrated booking engine
• Mobile and SEO optimisation
• Property management system (PMS) integration
• Customisable templates designed for hotels and B&Bs
• Secure payment processing
• Multilingual and multi-currency support

Choosing an industry-specific platform ensures your hotel website meets your business needs right from the start, with less technical effort and better guest experience.

Having a dedicated hotel website offers major benefits, especially for attracting guests and increasing direct bookings. Key advantages include:

• Building trust: Travellers are more likely to book with properties that have a professional, user-friendly website with images, descriptions, and clear information
• Increasing visibility and traffic: A website improves your online presence, helping potential guests find you through search engines
• Driving direct bookings: Websites give you full control over the guest journey and reduce reliance on third-party platforms (OTAs)
• Improving profitability: Direct bookings are on average 12.5% more profitable than those made through OTAs
• Ensuring business resilience: During the 2020 pandemic, direct bookings performed better than OTAs — generating 58.6% of 2019 booking volumes, compared to 41.5% for Booking.com and 22.8% for Expedia
• Tapping into digital trends: With 85% of U.S. adults preferring to book travel online and the global online travel market expected to reach $691 billion in the next 5 years, having a website ensures you remain competitive

In today’s digital-first travel landscape, a hotel website is essential for visibility, guest confidence, and long-term success.

Creating a hotel website involves several crucial steps:

• Choose a domain name
  This is your website’s internet address (e.g. www.yourhotelname.com)
• Organise your web hosting
  This is where your website will be hosted, or stored, online. When your domain and hosting are connected you’ll be able to access your website online
• Obtain an SSL certificate
  This ensures your website is safe and secure from hackers and data leaks, since you’ll be taking customer details like names, email addresses and payment details
• Utilise a website creator or CMS
  This can often depend on budget, but you’ll need a developer or CMS to build the website, and your booking system, on the domain name you’ve chosen

Covering these bases and deciding on your website requirements is a must if you want to take your hotel business online. If it sounds a little daunting, don’t worry — you always have a hotel website builder to fall back on.

A simple hotel website should include the following key content to attract and inform potential guests:

• High-quality photographs of the property, rooms, and amenities. Visual content is essential, especially for small hotels and B&Bs, to create a strong first impression
• Detailed room descriptions, including features, amenities, and pricing. This helps guests make informed booking decisions
• Location details, such as the full address, how to get there, and an embedded map
• Information about nearby attractions, like restaurants, parks, and museums, to help guests plan their stay
• Clear policies and procedures, including check-in/check-out times, cancellation policies, pet policies, and other important house rules

Including this content ensures transparency, builds trust, and improves the chances of converting visitors into direct bookings.

Independent B&B owners and small hoteliers can easily create a simple hotel website design using all-in-one hotel management solutions like Little Hotelier. These platforms offer:

• Pre-built, customisable templates that you can tailor with your own images, colours, and content
• Integrated online booking engines connected directly to your Property Management System (PMS) for seamless reservation management
• User-friendly setup wizards that guide you step-by-step, allowing you to build and update your website without technical skills

Using solutions like Little Hotelier helps you launch a professional, mobile-optimised website quickly and start winning more bookings.

The best hotel website builder includes an easily integrated booking engine that lets travellers use their computers or smart devices to book and pay for travel on your website, and even through your Facebook page.

Setting up a booking engine is a similar process to your hotel website, just with fewer steps. You’ll need to provide:

• General property information like your small property name, website homepage, currency, timezone, and star rating
• Address and contact details
• Rate settings like your minimum room rate
• Occupancy settings like maximum ages for child guests
• Property description
• Photos

Once you’re set up, you’ll have an inventory grid where you can set the day-by-day pricing, availability and restrictions for your rooms.

After that, you’ll need to decide if you want to integrate a payment gateway so you can process payments directly within the booking engine — or use a separate system to process the details you captured.

Little Hotelier comes with a payment processing solution that integrates naturally with our online booking engine.

To accept and manage direct bookings on your hotel website, use an integrated booking engine. This tool enables guests to:

• Search for available rooms in real-time
• Select their preferred room type and dates
• Book and pay instantly online

Using a booking engine improves efficiency compared to email or phone enquiries, which can be slow and prone to errors. It also allows you to add a clear ‘Book Now’ button on your site, boosting booking conversions and providing a seamless user experience.

Integrating a booking engine with your hotel website can be done in several ways:

• All-in-one solutions like Little Hotelier include both a website builder and a booking engine, offering seamless automatic integration
• If you use a separate booking engine, you will typically need to manually embed booking widgets, code snippets, or API connections into your website
• Many providers, including Little Hotelier, offer detailed integration guides and support to help you connect your booking engine smoothly

Proper integration ensures your guests can book rooms directly on your website with real-time availability and secure payment processing.

The cost of a simple hotel website varies widely depending on your needs:

• Custom-designed hotel websites can cost around $15,000 or more upfront, plus recurring fees for secure web hosting, booking engine integration, and ongoing support and maintenance
• On average, ongoing costs may reach up to $500 per month for these services
• Alternatively, platforms like Little Hotelier offer a 30-day free trial with full access to their website builder, booking engine, and PMS integrations
• After the trial, you can continue with Little Hotelier Pro at a fixed, no-commission price starting from $99 per month

This option provides a cost-effective way to launch and maintain your hotel website with all essential features included.

Yes, you can create and use a hotel website for free by taking advantage of a 30-day full-access trial offered by services like Little Hotelier. During this trial, you get access to all features, including the booking engine and website builder, with no lock-in contracts. You can cancel anytime before the trial ends without any charges. After the trial, you may choose to continue with a paid plan or cancel your subscription. This allows you to launch your own booking website and start accepting online reservations risk-free.

Setting up and getting started with Little Hotelier’s website builder begins with signing up for your free trial. Depending on your chosen plan, you will either complete a quick online sign-up with a step-by-step ‘wizard’ or be connected to a professional onboarding specialist. Throughout the process, a smartguide will assist you by providing clear instructions to help you make the most of the software. To speed up setup, prepare high-quality photos of your property and rooms, a list of room types, and key property information such as contact details.

Support is available 24/7 during and after your website builder setup. Depending on your plan, you can access email and online chat support, with dedicated phone support available on higher-tier plans. Additionally, Little Hotelier offers a comprehensive learning centre to help answer questions about features and usage.