How much a hotel website costs: prices, booking engine and channel manager

The question almost always arrives the same way: "how much does it cost to rebuild the website?". The honest answer starts by moving it one step, because what you'll be paying for isn't one thing: it's three, and you sign for them with three different companies.

That isn't an accounting detail. It's the reason two quotes that look comparable often aren't, and why the first-year total usually lands higher than expected. Here's who pays whom, the vendors' published figures, and the questions to ask before you sign.

The site, the booking engine and the channel manager are three contracts

The website is built by a consultant or an agency. The booking engine and the channel manager are products made by software houses, each with its own contract, invoice, support line and renewal. Where there is one, the PMS, the property management system, is a fourth item.

The technical point that explains the whole misunderstanding is this: the site doesn't contain the booking engine, it hosts it. The integration belongs to whoever builds the site; the engine stays with its supplier. A website quote covers the work of connecting them. It doesn't cover the engine's subscription, because that isn't something the website builder sells you.

Hence the practical consequence: if one quote includes the engine and the other doesn't, it isn't that one is cheaper. You're looking at two different things.

And there's nobody to blame, because the confusion is structural rather than intended: the website quote and the software fee are born in two different conversations, with two different people, at two different moments. Each quote is complete with respect to what each party does. The total doesn't exist on either of their desks: it only exists on yours.

What each one does: one takes the money, one distributes, one runs the place

• Booking engine. Takes the booking and the payment on your site. Without one, your site can only collect enquiries.
• Channel manager. Keeps availability and rates aligned across the portals, so you don't sell the same room twice.
• PMS. Runs the property: arrivals, rooms, accounts.

They aren't interchangeable, and mixing them up is common. The useful corollary: a property that doesn't sell through portals may not need a channel manager, and one that sells only through portals doesn't need a booking engine. Almost nobody is in either of those situations, but knowing what each piece is for is the first way to avoid paying for one you don't need yet.

One of these pieces, the connection between your prices and the outside world, also serves something that seems unrelated to the site: it's the same stream that lets you appear in Google's box with a price and a direct link, both free and paid, as I cover in Google Ads for hotels.

What the website costs: the figures

Mine I don't publish, for the same reason this article exists: two properties with the same number of rooms can need two very different sites. I quote for the case, and for a place to stay the reference is never the single-language version, more on that shortly.

What is fixed, and what you can plan around from the start, is everything else: the fee includes four to eight hours of work a month, direct phone support, there is no minimum term. Each additional language is its own line on the fee, the same whichever band you are in.

See what it covers in your case

Answer and see what changes. The price depends on the same answers, and I tell you when we talk.

What you need

A websiteAn online shopCustom software

In how many languages

1 language2 languages3 languages

Copy and photos

Already have themPartlyStill to do

Your case

Quote made to fit

Direct phone support included: a number you can call, and I pick up.

Figures based on a site of around 10 pages.

Every month: domain, hosting, certificate, backups and updates included, plus 4 to 8 hours to change the site, edits, new pages, development.

The fee has no end date: it carries on for as long as you need it.

With copy and photos ready you sit at the bottom of the bracket: it’s the heaviest item after the decisions that have to be made from scratch.

It’s an estimate, not a quote: the exact number comes after seeing what there is to do.

Let’s talk about your case

The monthly fee is the only way I work. The reasoning behind how those bands are built, and why a one-off quote isn't the same thing said another way, is in how much a website costs. What interests me here is what that article doesn't cover: why a place to stay falls outside the standard scope.

Why "around ten pages" isn't a hotel's scope

My bands are calculated on a site of around ten pages. A hotel almost always exceeds that, for reasons you can list:

• One page per room type, not per room. That's four or five pages whose job is to sell, not to describe.
• Seasonal offers, which change two or three times a year and need publishing without calling anybody.
• Area pages, how to get here, what there is to do nearby, which are what catch people searching for the area and not yet for you.
• Languages. In hospitality they aren't an extra, they're the requirement. A single-language site, for someone hosting guests from abroad, simply leaves those bookings to the portal, which does speak their language.

That's why the realistic reference for a property is the two-language row, and for many it's the three.

What the software costs: who publishes a price list and who doesn't

I went through the official pricing pages of fifteen of the suppliers most used in Italy. Four publish a figure, eleven don't.

The figures below are taken from the suppliers' public price lists. They aren't mine and they aren't offers, I'm reporting them to show the scale of the pricing models, not to recommend a product:

• Krossbooking: €4 per room per month for the property management system alone, €6 per room per month with channel manager and booking engine, VAT excluded, minimum three rooms, no activation fee. Above twenty rooms the list refers you to a dedicated quote. (price list)
• Smoobu: €29 a month on the Professional Flex plan, plus 0.9% per booking. The textbook case of the mixed fee-plus-percentage model. (price list)
• Octorate: from €8 per room per month on the base plan with channel manager and booking engine; higher plans are by quote. (price list)
• Beds24: €15.50 a month base plus €0.55 a month per connection, where a connection is one room category towards one channel. The total is assembled from modules: the base isn't the final cost. (price list)

For the other eleven, the price is set during the quote. And the dividing line isn't between who's transparent and who isn't: it's between two ways of selling. Suppliers you sign up to yourself, with a free trial and a card, publish the list because the price is part of the buying journey. Suppliers who configure before the contract, modules, rooms, channels, data migration, training, publish the method, because a single figure would say very little and would almost always be wrong. It's consistent with a modular product, and it's the same reason I publish a band rather than a number.

The four ways a booking engine gets charged to you

When you ask for a quote, the figure that comes back can be built in four different ways, often combined:

1. A flat fee per property.
2. A fee per room: it grows with you, which is why the same offer is cheap at eight rooms and expensive at forty.
3. A component per connection or per channel: you pay for each link to a portal.
4. A percentage commission on direct bookings.

The fourth deserves an extra line, because it produces a recurring misunderstanding: "zero commission" means zero commission to the portals on those bookings, not zero commission to the engine's supplier. That's literally what the claim says, and it's accurate; it simply answers a different question from the one you have in mind while reading it. On top of that, separately, come the card payment charges.

How to get two quotes onto the same line

Three rules and nine questions. The rules: bring everything back to a monthly figure, write next to each item who invoices it, and check that the scope matches, number of pages, languages, who loads the content, who does the integration with the engine.

Then ask the software supplier:

1. What the charge is based on: property, room, channel or percentage of bookings, and whether they're combined.
2. Whether the quoted fee includes VAT or not.
3. Activation, data migration and training: inside or outside the fee.
4. If there's a percentage, what it's calculated on and what happens to cancellations and no-shows.
5. Payment processing charges: who takes them and how much.
6. Minimum term, notice period, automatic renewal.
7. What happens to the booking history if you change supplier, and in what format you export it.
8. Whose name the domain is registered in, and whose the connections to the portals are.
9. When a booking fails, who answers: the person who built the site or the one supplying the engine.

The ninth is the one nobody thinks to ask beforehand, and the one that matters most once the season starts.

The order it makes sense to spend in

You don't need to buy everything at once, and it's rarely the right call:

1. Work out what isn't working: the seven free checks are in this article.
2. Fix what you have, if the checks say you can.
3. The booking engine before the redesign, if the site can carry one: it's what turns visits into bookings, and without it a new site changes little.
4. Rebuild the site, when the structural checks all point the same way.

And a variation almost nobody considers: starting without a booking engine is a rational choice for a small or seasonal property. A well-made enquiry form, a careful contact page and calendar synchronisation carry the early days perfectly well, and the engine gets added when the volume of direct bookings justifies it. It's the most immediate saving available in the first year.

The website bundled with the software subscription

Several software suppliers include a website in their subscription. It's a legitimate option and for some properties, especially at the beginning, it's the right one: it costs little, it goes live quickly, and it already talks to the engine.

Three questions define it, and they're the ones I'd ask:

• Does the site stay yours if you change supplier one day?
• Is the domain registered in your name?
• Are the contents, text, photos, pages, exportable?

If the answers are yes, it's a reasonable option to weigh alongside the others. If they're no, know that you're renting your online presence as well as the software: a choice you can make, as long as it is a choice.

Where to start

Do the sum in full, monthly, with the name of whoever invoices each line written beside it. In most cases the final number is lower than feared, but spread across more contracts than expected.

If you'd like me to do that sum on your property, there's the digital check-up: it is free if we then start with one of the monthly services, and otherwise it has a cost of its own, which I tell you before we begin. Otherwise write to me with how many rooms you have and what you use today: it becomes clear quite quickly which of the three contracts you actually need.