By Konstantin Artemyev

September 24, 2026

It is surprisingly easy for a hotel website to become a project of its own. The owner wants it to look expensive, the designer wants to demonstrate good design, the marketing specialist wants more traffic, and the developer suggests another set of impressive features. Eventually, the website develops a life of its own that may have very little to do with the reason a hotel needs a website in the first place.

For me, its purpose is much simpler. A hotel website should help generate direct bookings and should not make it harder for a guest to complete a decision they have already almost made.

This matters because the booking journey in hospitality is quite different from many other industries. Most travellers do not begin by visiting the website of a particular hotel. They start with a destination, a neighbourhood or a general idea of where they want to stay, and they go somewhere that allows them to compare many properties at once. Quite often that means Booking, Expedia, Airbnb, Google Hotels or another comparison platform.

A large part of the decision is already happening there. The guest compares location, photographs, reviews, ratings, room types, facilities and price. Dozens of hotels gradually become five, then perhaps two or three, and eventually one of those properties is interesting enough for the traveller to search its name on Google and open the official website.

This is why I tend to see the hotel website as a later part of the booking funnel rather than the beginning of it. The guest is no longer completely cold traffic. The hotel has already attracted attention, and the website now has to confirm that the choice makes sense, show the property in a little more depth and, ideally, allow the guest to complete the booking directly.

This is also where many hotel websites begin to create unnecessary problems.

A site can become too beautiful, too unusual or too interested in its own brand presentation. A large video takes several seconds to load, the booking button disappears somewhere in the design, room types are difficult to find, and understanding what the hotel actually sells requires a small interactive journey through the designer’s imagination.

I have nothing against good design. A hotel website should communicate the atmosphere of the property, and good photography and visual identity matter. But design works for me only while it supports the booking process. Once the design itself starts demanding the guest’s attention, something has gone wrong.

The traveller did not arrive to evaluate the creativity of the web designer. They arrived to understand whether this hotel suits them and whether they can book it now.

The same applies to the personal taste of the owner or general manager. I have seen many hotel websites where certain elements were there mainly because the owner liked a particular photograph, font, colour or long story about the history of the property. For the owner, the hotel may genuinely be a major part of life. For the guest, it is still one possible place to stay for four or five nights.

That does not mean a hotel website should have no personality. In fact, the official website can show many things that an OTA cannot communicate very well: the life of the property, the people behind it, the surrounding area, small details, local recommendations and the reasons why one particular type of guest may feel comfortable there. But this content should help the decision, not distract from it.

This is why, for me, the most important part of the website is not really the homepage. It is the booking engine.

A hotel can have an excellent website, invest in professional photography and spend weeks improving the copy, and then end the journey with a form saying “send us a request” or “contact us for availability”. At that point, much of the previous work has been wasted.

If a guest can book the same hotel through an OTA in a few minutes, the direct booking experience cannot be significantly more difficult. A proper booking engine should show availability, clear final prices, room categories and rate conditions, and allow the reservation to be completed without another conversation with the hotel.

Some PMS and booking-engine providers now spend considerable effort on this part of the process: how the guest moves from selecting a room to completing payment, where booking engine friction appears and which steps reduce hotel website conversion. I find this far more interesting than many spectacular website features. Changing one step in the booking process can sometimes have more commercial value than redesigning the entire homepage.

Hotel digital marketing has a similar problem. I become slightly nervous when the main promise is simply: “We will bring more traffic to your website.”

Traffic on its own has very little value. It is perfectly possible to bring thousands of visitors who had no serious intention of booking the hotel.

The desire to generate large or cheap traffic can also produce some strange marketing decisions. Aggressive advertisements, promises of discounts that do not really exist, clickbait headlines or content that has little connection with the actual positioning of the property may improve certain campaign metrics while doing very little for the hotel itself. In some cases, they can damage the reputation we are supposed to be building.

I am also cautious about the popular idea that hotel digital marketing can simply replace OTA commission. The calculation looks attractive: instead of paying Booking a commission, spend the same money on Google Ads and receive direct bookings.

In practice, it is more complicated. Booking, Expedia and the other large platforms spend enormous amounts of money to be present at the moment when a traveller first decides to search for accommodation. They offer comparison, reviews, trust, familiar payment methods and a booking process people already understand. For an independent hotel, competing with them for the very top of the funnel is not always economically sensible.

I find the later part of the funnel much more interesting, because this is where the hotel already has an advantage. The traveller has seen the property on an OTA, remembered the name, searched for it on Google and reached the official website. At this stage, the question is no longer how to generate another anonymous website visit. The question is how not to lose somebody who is already seriously considering the hotel.

This is why I prefer to look at the website and digital marketing as parts of the same sales system rather than separate projects. Where do our guests first discover the hotel? Which channels do they use during research? What do they see when they arrive on the official website? Can they understand the rooms, availability and price quickly? Is there a clear reason to book direct, and how many steps stand between interest and confirmation?

Those questions matter to me much more than whether the hotel website looks similar to the latest fashionable examples from another industry.

A hotel website has a very specific job. It does not need to entertain somebody for twenty minutes, and it does not need to demonstrate the artistic personality of the owner or the designer. It needs to give the guest the final reasons to choose the property and then stay out of the way while the booking is completed.

Perhaps that is why I usually notice a bad hotel website much more than a good one. On a good website, I find the room I want, understand the price and complete the reservation without thinking very much about the website at all.

For a commercial website, that may be one of the best results it can achieve.