Websites for hotels and motels

Take the booking direct, instead of paying a commission for it.

Most accommodation businesses in regional Victoria aren’t short of guests. They’re short of guests who book direct. Someone finds the place on a booking site, likes the photos, books it there, and a slice of that tariff goes to the booking site instead of staying in the till. Your own website is the one channel where that doesn’t happen.

That’s the job I do. I’m Matt, I run Your Mate Agency out of Mallacoota, and I build websites for accommodation businesses around Victoria: motels, holiday rentals, caravan parks, B&Bs and the pub with rooms upstairs.

The booking that costs you a commission

The booking sites do a real job. They put you in front of people who have never heard of your town, and for a new place or a quiet week that’s worth paying for. The trouble starts when they’re taking a cut of guests who already knew your name.

That’s the repeat guest, the one who saw your sign driving in, the one a mate told about the place. They search you by name, land on whatever comes up first, and if that’s your listing rather than your own site, you’ve just paid a commission to be found by someone who was already looking for you. You know what that percentage is better than I do.

What a guest checks before they book

Someone deciding where to stay is running a short list of questions, and they run it fast. What does the room actually look like. What does it cost on the nights I want. How far is it from the thing I’m coming for. Is there anything to do nearby. And can I book it right now without ringing anyone.

Answer all of those in the first minute and they book. Miss one and they go back to the booking site, because the booking site answers the lot. That’s the whole game. Your site doesn’t have to be fancier than theirs. It has to answer the same questions, with your photos, at a price that hasn’t got a commission built into it.

Our old website just wasn’t doing our properties justice. Matt from Your Mate Agency built us a new site that actually matches the quality of what we’re selling. Looks professional, easy to navigate, and we’ve had great feedback from clients. Highly recommend.
Amelia Hammond Hammond Properties

What goes on an accommodation site

Whether it’s one holiday rental or a motel with twenty rooms, the same handful of things do the work.

Photos that do the place justice, picked and ordered so a guest can see the room, the view and the space before they commit.
Rates and availability that are actually current, so nobody has to ring and ask a question the site should have answered.
A booking path that works, whether that’s a proper booking system or a clean handoff to the one you already use.
The location page nobody bothers writing: what’s nearby, how far the beach or the festival is, where to get a feed.
A site that loads fast on a phone in patchy regional reception, because that’s where and when people actually book.

The local SEO foundations go in while it’s being built rather than bolted on afterwards, so the site has a fair shot at turning up when someone searches accommodation in your town.

Your site and the booking sites

I’m not going to tell you to delist. For a lot of places the booking sites are how a first-time guest finds the town at all, and cutting them off to prove a point costs more than it saves.

What’s worth changing is the mix. Let the booking sites keep bringing you strangers. Your own site takes the ones who already know your name, the repeat bookings and the direct enquiries, and those arrive without a cut taken out of them. Move even a small share of your nights across and the difference is real money, and it’s money you keep.

How the build runs

No drawn-out agency process with ten meetings. Here’s the whole thing, start to finish.

We have a chat about the place, who stays there, which months are quiet and where your bookings come from now. Thirty minutes, no jargon.
I get the photos and the words sorted. With accommodation the photos do most of the selling, so this is where the time goes, and I’ll tell you straight if the ones you’ve got aren’t up to it.
I build it mobile-first, wire in the booking or enquiry side so a guest can act on the spot, and put the local SEO foundations in place.
We go through it together, I make the changes, and it goes live. Then I show you how to keep the rates and photos current yourself, or I keep looking after it.

What it costs

My prices are published, so you don’t need a sales call to see a number. A simple site for a single holiday rental and a bigger build with a booking system are different jobs at different figures, and both are on the page. No lock-in contracts.

See my pricing

Questions I get asked

Will a website actually get me direct bookings?

It gives you somewhere for a direct booking to land, which is the part most places are missing. A guest who already knows your name will search you, and if the first thing they can act on is your own site with current rates and a way to book, that booking comes to you without a commission on it. What a website won’t do on its own is create demand that isn’t there. It changes where an existing booking gets made, and for a lot of places that is the bit worth fixing.

Do I have to come off Booking.com or Airbnb?

No, and I’d usually tell you not to. The booking sites are how a first-time guest finds your town at all, and delisting to make a point tends to cost more than it saves. The aim is to shift the mix, not burn the channel: they keep bringing you strangers, your own site takes the repeat guests and the people searching you by name.

Can you connect a booking system to the site?

Yes. If you already run a channel manager or a booking engine, the site works with it rather than replacing it, so your calendar stays in one place and you’re not double-handling. If you’ve got nothing and you’re still doing it by phone and notebook, we can set something simple up. Either way I’ll talk you through what it costs to run before you commit to it.

My photos are pretty ordinary. Does that matter?

More than anything else on the page, if I’m honest. Accommodation sells on the photos, and a good site can’t rescue images that make a decent room look small and dark. Sometimes the fix is just reshooting on a clear day and picking better ones, which costs you nothing but an afternoon. I’ll tell you if that’s the real problem rather than build you a site that can’t do its job.

Do you only work with places around East Gippsland?

No. I’m based in Mallacoota, so plenty of my work is around East Gippsland and the Lakes, but a website works the same wherever the place is, and I build for accommodation businesses around Victoria. Where you’re based isn’t a problem. If you’d rather deal with someone local to the region generally, that’s what web design across Gippsland covers.

Can I update my own rates and photos?

Yes. Seasonal rates and new photos are the two things that go stale fastest on an accommodation site, so I set it up so you can change them yourself without needing a developer, and I show you how. If you’d rather not touch it, hand it back to me. Plenty of places do a bit of both.

Or just have a chat

Thirty minutes on the phone and I’ll tell you straight what your place needs and roughly what it’d cost. If the honest answer is that better photos and a tidy-up beat a rebuild, you’ll hear that too. You talk to me, not a call centre.

Book a chat