Website design for hotels: one clear way up to the front desk
Someone presses a call button, whether a search listing or an advert, and the doors open on the hotel's own site. What they meet in the first few seconds decides whether they find the way to the front desk or step back out. Website design for hotels is mostly the craft of making that route obvious.
The site we build and manage rests on one contact route, one page per stay type and one page per neighborhood, and the pages are written alongside the content work for hotels so the wording and the layout agree.
What the site is for
A hotel site needs one next step, and its layout points at it
Most hotel sites try to say everything at once. The page fills with banners, side menus and small buttons, and the reader has to hunt for the phone number. Our approach to website design is the opposite: decide what the one next step is, then arrange the page so nothing competes with it.
For a hotel the next step is a returned call or a short form on the hotel's own site. The form stays short: a name, a mailbox, a number to ring back. It never carries dates, room wishes, card details or a guest list; those belong to the hotel's own booking tools, which we do not touch.
The rest of the site, the calm layout, the stay-type pages, the neighborhood pages, exists to carry a visitor to that step without a detour.
Six parts of a hotel site that get designed on purpose
- Contact
One contact route at the lobby sign
One plainly labeled route to reception stays put on every page, rather than four different buttons scattered across the layout.
- Stay types
A page for each stay type the hotel lists
Every stay type the hotel chooses to list is given a page under a plain heading, so a search using that wording has the right place to end.
- Neighborhoods
A neighborhood page for every address
A property gets a page that describes where it sits in the town, in words the general manager would use at the front desk. A group gets one per address.
- Phones
A page drawn for the handset before the monitor
Large text, thumb-sized links and a short path to the contact route. Most hotel searches start on a handset, so the small screen is drawn before the large one.
- Imagery
Pictures the hotel owns, used plainly
We use photographs the hotel supplies and has the right to publish, in a quiet frame with a caption written for a reader who cannot see them. No generic stock imagery.
- Upkeep
Hosting and edits handled at one desk
The two larger plans, Gold and Platinum, leave the site's hosting and its day-to-day edits with us, so a changed phone line does not wait for a developer.
Where a hotel site is judged, screen by screen
| Screen of the site | What a visitor hunts for | How we draw it |
|---|---|---|
| The first screen | Whose hotel this is and where the property sits | The hotel's name, its town, one sentence and the contact route, with nothing else crowding in |
| A stay-type page | Whether the page matches the words that brought them | A heading that repeats the stay type, short paragraphs and the contact route again at the end |
| A neighborhood page | Whether the address is where they expected | A plain description of the surrounding blocks, written from the front desk's point of view |
| The contact page | A quick way to reach a person | A short form with three fields and a line asking the visitor to keep any guest details out |
| The footer | The address and the phone line, correct and unchanged | The very contact details the Maps listing shows, repeated identically wherever they appear |
Four landings between a blank page and a live hotel site
Draw the shaft before any page
Before any website design is drawn, we list the stay types, the addresses and the neighborhoods, then sketch which page the car should stop at for each, with the contact route on all of them.
Write from the hotel's own facts
The hotel hands over its facts and its images, and we write the wording around them. Whatever the hotel says about itself remains the hotel's statement, in the hotel's words.
Build it, then test it on a phone
We try each page on small screens, send a test through the contact form and confirm it asks for no more than the three fields.
Publish after approval, and keep the edits coming
The pages stay unpublished until the hotel has agreed to every line. Afterward, change requests arrive through the contact form and are carried out on the managed plans.
Three beliefs about hotel websites worth putting down
Said at the bell standThe opening screen should list all that the hotel is.
What the shaft showsThe opening screen has a single task: name the hotel and show the way to reception. Detail belongs on the pages below it, in the hotel's own words.
Said at the bell standIf it looks right on a desktop, the site is finished.
What the shaft showsA hotel site is often read on a handset between errands. The small screen is drawn first, and the large one checked afterward.
Said at the bell standWebsite design is photography.
What the shaft showsPhotographs are the hotel's to supply. The structure, the wording and the contact route decide whether a visitor finds the front desk.
What the build crew checks before a hotel site goes live
- Lettering stays big enough for a small handset, with firm contrast against its background.
- Every link, button and form field can be reached from a keyboard.
- Each picture has a short caption or description written for someone who cannot see it.
- Pages are kept light, so the doors open quickly on a slow connection.
- The contact form shows three fields and a line asking visitors to leave guest details out.
- Each page repeats the Maps listing's address line and phone line exactly.
Which plan carries the managed hotel site
Silver, priced at $1,495 monthly, comes with no website. Gold, $2,495 monthly, adds the hotel's site, run by us, and Platinum, $3,495 monthly, keeps that site and widens the page count. All three are laid out on the price sheet; starting costs nothing and no agreement is signed.
A property happy with the site it owns can skip our website design and stay on a search plan alone. Pages we write for the search work can be placed on that site, and the lead tracking still counts the calls and forms it receives.
Questions a hotel owner asks about the website itself
Can a hotel keep its own booking tools on the new site?
Yes. Whatever the hotel uses to handle stays stays the hotel's. Our website design adds clear pages and one contact route; we do not build or run the hotel's own reservation tools.
Who supplies the pictures for a hotel website?
The hotel does, from pictures it owns or has the right to publish. We place them plainly, write captions and describe nothing the hotel has not already said about itself.
What happens to an existing hotel site during a redesign?
We start by listing the pages that already exist and the address each one uses, so that a page worth keeping is kept. The owner approves the new structure before anything is published.
Describe the hotel site you have now
Say, in a sentence or two, which addresses the property has and what the site is missing. Keep guest names, dates and reservation details out of the form.
Which stay types should get landing pages first?
List the stay types you want found, the addresses and neighborhoods around the property, and the local sites that already point to it. Leave every guest name, date and booking detail out of the note.
Press the button for the top floor
A call is where we choose the first stops: the stay type whose landing page goes up ahead of the others, the address that follows it, and the plan that takes the strain.
The elevator drawn above is an illustration only; it forecasts nothing about who finds a hotel.