A hotel website is the site that turns people searching for your hotel by name into direct bookings: a booking engine visible on every page, one page per room type, the legal details of the business in plain sight, and rates connected to Google. On the 30 Google Maps listings of the most-reviewed hotels in Florence, Rimini and Naples, 13 lead to a page inside a chain's website and 17 to a site of the hotel itself; 15 of those 17 use a third-party booking engine (Visilay survey, 11 November 2026).
"Hotel website design" gets 170 searches a month in the UK, at an average cost per click of $12.78 (Google Ads UK, 12-month average, DataForSEO). That is what web agencies pay to find you.
The mistakes we found most often on the 17 single-hotel sites:
- 12 of 17 have no Hotel structured data, so Google has to guess stars, address and amenities from the copy;
- 3 home pages have a title tag with no city (two start with "Home -"), on the very page that receives brand searches;
- the Italian registration code (CIN) is missing from the landing page in 3 cases, including a four-star hotel in Florence whose name is searched 14,800 times a month.
If everyone books on Booking.com anyway, why do I need a site?
So you stop giving away the people who search for you by name. The names of 10 hotels in our sample with their own site add up to 104,500 searches a month on Google Italy. Those people have already chosen you; the only question is whether they book on your site or through a commission. How to protect your name is covered in our hotel SEO guide.
For Valore Solare the first fix was measurement: the account was counting 15,267 technical events against 5,467 clicks as conversions. After the fix: 1,506 enquiries at an average of €70.78.
For Sunscape a site built with one page per territory went from 1 to 38 of 143 tracked keywords on page one in six months.
What has solar energy got to do with a hotel?
The same two problems. In a hotel the real conversion is a booking with its value, not a click on "Book now". And the territory is the room: one page per room type, with everything a guest compares.
Below you will find what the 30 most-reviewed hotels have on their sites, the pages you need, what to ask your booking engine provider, the legal details a hotel site must show and what it costs, from price lists published today. Let's go.
What we found on 30 hotels in Florence, Rimini and Naples (zero chains in Rimini)
Almost half of the most-reviewed hotel listings lead to a chain's pages: 13 of 30, all in Florence (6) and Naples (7). In Rimini all top 10 listings belong to hotels with their own site. We took Google Maps listings in the hotel category, with a website, within 4 km of the city centre, sorted by number of reviews, and opened the page each one links to.
| What we measured | Result |
|---|---|
| Listings analysed | 30 (10 per city) |
| Lead to a page inside a chain's website | 13 (Florence 6, Naples 7, Rimini 0) |
| Lead to a single-hotel site | 17 (Florence 4, Rimini 10, Naples 3) |
| Pages our server could read | 25 (5 international chains block access) |
| Italian CIN code in the page source | 20 of 25 (14 of 17 single-hotel sites) |
| Recognisable third-party booking engine | 15 of 17 single-hotel sites (Vertical Booking on 5 of 10 in Rimini) |
| Hotel or LodgingBusiness structured data | 11 of 25 (5 of 17 single-hotel sites) |
| WhatsApp button or link | 12 of 17 single-hotel sites, 0 of 8 chain pages |
| Tap-to-call phone number | 13 of 17 single-hotel sites |
| Best-rate or book-direct promise | 9 of 17 single-hotel sites |
| Listing link with tracking parameters | 15 of 30 (12 with UTM) |
The striking figure is the gap between the two groups. Readable chain pages never offer WhatsApp; single-hotel sites almost always do, 12 of 17.
So are chain pages better built?
On structured data, yes: 6 of 8 readable chain pages have it, against 5 of 17 single-hotel sites. Elsewhere, no. And half the listings, 15 of 30, add tracking parameters to the link (12 with UTM tags): it is the only way to separate visitors from Maps from organic search in Google Analytics.
The pages a hotel website needs (one per room type, not one for all)
A hotel website needs six kinds of page: a home page with the date picker, one page per room type, offers as real pages, facilities (restaurant, spa, meeting rooms), location and directions, and contact details with the business information. The room page is the one that sells: it is where a guest compares your site with the online travel agency.
- Home page: name, city and star rating in the title tag, a check-in, check-out and guests form on the first mobile screen.
- One page per room type: square metres, beds, view, real photos, what is included, a "from" price and a button that opens the booking engine on that room.
- Offers and packages as pages with their own URL, not in a PDF or a home page slider.
- Facilities: a page each for restaurant, spa, pool and meeting rooms if you also sell them to non-residents.
- Location and directions: real distances to the station, venue, beach or centre. Which local content brings traffic is explained in our hotel SEO guide.
- Contact and legal details: address, phone, WhatsApp, company and VAT numbers.
What about languages?
As many as your guests' nationalities, with hreflang tags telling Google which version to show. In our sample 2 of 17 single-hotel sites have none; how to set them up is in hreflang tags. If the site gets visits but no bookings, the problem is usually on these pages, as we show in why a website does not generate leads.
The booking engine: what to ask your provider (15 of 17 sites use a third-party one)
A booking engine is the software that shows availability and rates and takes the booking on your site. In our sample we recognised seven: Vertical Booking, Simple Booking, Booking Expert, D-EDGE, Blastness, SynXis and Iperbooking. The site hosts it, but the questions that decide how many direct bookings you get go to the engine provider.
- Does it send rates to Google Hotel Center? You need that to appear with free booking links, which according to Google let you "drive more bookings at no cost".
- Do the rates on your site match the ones sent to Google? Google lists "landing page experience" and the historical accuracy of prices among the signals it uses to rank those links.
- Does the booking reach Google Analytics and Google Ads with its value? If the engine runs on another domain you need cross-domain measurement, otherwise every booking looks as if it came from the engine itself.
- Does the form open on the chosen room with dates already filled in, or start from scratch?
And if guests pick their dates in Google's box first?
That is exactly when the landing page matters. Google says that clicking the link takes users "directly to the landing page you provide". If that page asks for the dates again, the guest goes back and books with the travel agency. How to connect the engine to a Hotel campaign is in Google Ads for hotels.
The legal details a hotel site must show (in Italy, a fine of €500 to €5,000)
In the UK, any business selling online must show its name, geographic address, email, trade register number and VAT number in a form that is "easily, directly and permanently accessible", under regulation 6 of the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002. A hotel site that takes bookings is covered.
Italy goes further. Since our data comes from Italian hotels, this is what we checked: hotels must show their national identification code (CIN) outside the building and "indicarlo in ogni annuncio ovunque pubblicato e comunicato" (state it in every advert, wherever published), under paragraph 6 of article 13-ter of decree-law 145/2023. Failing to display or state it carries a fine of €500 to €5,000 depending on the size of the property.
In our sample the CIN code appears in the source of 20 pages out of 25. On the 3 single-hotel sites where we did not find it, it is missing from the home page the listing links to. The safe place is the site-wide footer, next to the VAT number.
But Booking.com already shows it.
That is the platforms' obligation, which the same law sets out separately. Yours is still yours.
Is your site taking the bookings of people who search for you by name?
On the 17 single-hotel sites we opened, 12 have no Hotel structured data, 3 have a title tag with no city and 3 do not show the legal code on the landing page. Let's review yours together: room pages, a booking engine connected to Google, bookings measured with their value.
Book a strategy callHow much a hotel website costs (Italian price lists found on 11 November 2026)
A hotel website costs from around €2,500 for a simple project to over €20,000-30,000 for a project with strategy, SEO and an integrated booking engine, according to the public Italian price lists we found. On top comes the booking engine fee, which depends on the provider.
- Hotel Marketing Lab (May 2026): from €2,500 "per una soluzione semplice" to over €20,000-30,000 for an advanced project (source).
- MDW Creative (July 2026): €3,000-6,000 for a site with an integrated booking engine, pages per room category and basic multilingual setup; domain, hosting and maintenance usually €100-300 a year (source).
- MyComp (July 2023): €2,450 to €7,000 for a template-based site, from €7,500 for a custom design (source).
No price list says who writes the room pages, and they are the ones that sell. How to read a quote line by line is in how much a website costs, the technical basics in how to build an SEO-friendly website.
The sum that matters is a different one. A click on the name of one of these hotels costs advertisers $0.42 to $1.21 (DataForSEO, Google Ads Italy). If your site does not convert that click, a travel agency will, and it can bid on your name too.
Your site and AI answers: why ChatGPT linked four official sites out of five
We asked ChatGPT, with web search on, for a four-star hotel in Rimini on the seafront with a pool. It suggested 5 properties: 4 linked as "Sito ufficiale e prenotazioni" (official site and bookings) to the hotel's own site, 1 to a chain page, none to a travel agency. None of the 5 is among the 10 most-reviewed Rimini hotels in our sample.
For each one the answer lists exactly the three things asked for: star rating, seafront position, type of pool. An assistant can only repeat them if a page states them. It first breaks the question into sub-searches (query fan-out) and picks the pages that answer each one. Room and facility pages written with facts, the same name, address and phone number as the listing, and Hotel structured data leave it less to guess. Nobody can guarantee a citation.
For AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google's guide to AI features in Search says "there are no additional requirements": SEO basics apply. The local side is covered in local AI visibility.
Hotel website FAQs
Yes. People searching for your hotel by name land on your site or on a travel agency: without a site, every booking from someone who already chose you pays a commission. We run the numbers in hotel marketing.
It depends: it can sit on another domain, but then you need cross-domain measurement in Google Analytics. Otherwise bookings appear to come from the engine and you cannot tell which channel brought them.
It depends on the country: in the UK, business name, address, email, register number and VAT number under the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002. In Italy you also need the CIN code, with fines of €500 to €5,000 if it is missing.
It depends on the pages and the booking engine: public Italian price lists range from about €2,500 to over €20,000-30,000, plus €100-300 a year for hosting and maintenance and the booking engine fee.
Hotel website design, in short (and the check to do today)
People searching your name have already chosen you: the site decides whether you pay commission.
One page per room, with square metres, view and a "from" price.
Booking engine connected to Google Hotel Center, bookings measured with their value.
Legal details in the footer of every page.
The check to do today: open your home page on your phone, tap "Book" and count the steps before you see a price. In our sample 9 of 17 single-hotel sites promise the best rate for direct bookings: those steps are where the promise is kept or lost.
Next comes bringing more guests to the site, in lead generation for hotels. If you want to do it with us, see how we work in web development.
Talk soon!
