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Service

Hotel website development

For general managers and owners of independent hotels and small groups who need a direct-booking engine and reservations system that models room types, rate plans, extras and group allocations the way the hotel actually sells them, and connects to the property system already behind the desk.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

An independent hotel with forty rooms usually sells them through three or four places at once: an online travel agency or two, the phone, a booking widget bolted onto the website and, for groups and weddings, an email thread with a spreadsheet attached.

  • Each place holds its own idea of what is left.
  • The property management system behind the front desk is the only real record, but it is often updated after the sale, so a Saturday in July is sold twice: once online at the flexible rate and once by the events coordinator who had held six rooms for a wedding party on a sticky note.

Where it gets harder

Rate plans make this worse.

  • Advance-purchase, flexible, breakfast-included and corporate rates each carry their own cancellation terms, and the website widget cannot express them, so reservations telephone guests to explain what they actually bought.
  • Extras such as late checkout, parking or a dinner package are sold at the desk and never reach the folio until the morning of departure.
  • Meeting and events enquiries arrive through a generic contact form with no dates or numbers, so the coordinator starts every conversation by asking for them.
  • Returning guests are recognised only if a receptionist remembers their face.
  • None of this is a staff failure; it is the predictable result of inventory living in several places with nothing in charge of it.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom hotel build normally covers the inventory model first:

  • Room types with counts rather than individual rooms So the engine sells "a superior double" and the desk assigns room 214 on arrival
  • Rate plans per room type with their own cancellation and payment terms
  • Date-range availability with minimum and maximum stay rules Seasonal and day-of-week pricing and occupancy rules for extra guests
  • Extras and packages attached to the reservation
  • Group and allocation blocks That hold inventory for a wedding or a coach party with a release date
  • A meeting and events enquiry flow that captures dates Numbers and layout
  • Returning-guest recognition with rates the hotel configures. Deposits Balance schedules, housekeeping turnaround blocks, pre-arrival and post-stay guest messaging and a review request after checkout come from the shared stay capability set

How discovery works

Discovery works through a peak Saturday and a quiet midweek with reservations, the front desk and housekeeping: how allocations are held and released today, which rate plans actually sell, how the property management system is updated, what a corporate account expects and how events are quoted. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: search dates, choose room type and rate, add extras, pay or hold the reservation with card details, confirm, stay, review.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Replacing the property management system itself, point-of-sale in the restaurant and bar, payroll and accounting. Those stay where they are and we connect to them where the connection earns its place. A channel manager or online travel agency connection is scoped as an integration opportunity once we have seen what the provider permits, not assumed

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A two-hotel group with ninety rooms between them, a shared corporate client list, allocation blocks for a conference venue next door and an existing property system in each hotel.

That needs

  • One booking engine with a per-property inventory
  • A group-level rate and allocation view
  • A two-way exchange with each property system

That is a different build from a twenty-room hotel selling two rate plans, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of a peak weekend and a quiet midweek, including the current inventory sources
  • A written scope document naming each stage from search to review, with what is out of scope
  • Design of the booking engine, the reservations grid and the allocation view on desktop and the devices the desk uses
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of guest profiles, corporate accounts and future reservations from the current system, where relevant
  • Training for reservations, the front desk, housekeeping and the general manager, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts and a look at the property management system, current booking widget, rate sheets and the allocation spreadsheet.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the general manager, reservations and housekeeping; the inventory model, rate plans and scope document are agreed with a milestone plan.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the guest booking flow, the reservations grid and the allocation and events views, checked on the screens the desk actually uses.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: room types, rates and availability first, then the booking engine and payments, then allocations, extras, events enquiries and the property system exchange.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Reservations run a test month against real demand patterns, including a group block and a rate change, and tell us where the model does not match the hotel.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Rate logic, allocation rules and desk layout are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Guest data and reservations migrated, the property system exchange verified on live inventory, payments and messaging tested, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The hotel takes direct bookings on the new engine; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Property management systems for inventory, folios and arrivals
  • Channel managers and online travel agency connections, scoped per provider
  • Card payment providers for deposits, pre-authorisations and balances
  • Email and SMS providers for confirmations, pre-arrival and post-stay messages
  • Accounting software for daily revenue and deposit reconciliation
  • Door-lock and key-card systems where the hotel wants arrival codes issued
  • Restaurant and spa booking systems for packages that include them

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A two-hotel group with shared corporate accounts and a conference allocation

The situation

A group of two hotels with ninety rooms between them was selling the same inventory through two property systems, an online travel agency and an events coordinator's spreadsheet, and a conference centre next door regularly asked for forty rooms on dates that were already half sold.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because the allocation and corporate layer sits across two properties with two different property systems, which standard booking widgets treat as one hotel at a time.

The scope we would propose

  • One booking engine over a per-property inventory of room types
  • Rate plans with their own terms per property
  • Allocation blocks with a named holder, a release date and automatic return of unsold rooms to general sale
  • A corporate account list shared across both hotels with negotiated rates
  • A meeting and events enquiry flow that lands on the coordinator's queue with dates and numbers already filled
  • A two-way exchange with each property system so the desk never re-keys a reservation

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of properties, room types and rate plans
  • Whether a property management system must be integrated and what it permits
  • Group and allocation rules, including release dates and events enquiries
  • Extras and packages, and whether restaurant or spa bookings are included
  • Returning-guest and corporate rate handling
  • Channel manager or online travel agency connections scoped as integrations
  • Volume of guest profiles and reservations to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Hotel booking package

Room types, rate plans, extras, allocation blocks, housekeeping and guest messaging in one direct-booking engine for independent hotels.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is the package enough and when do we need a custom build?

The hotel booking package covers room types, rate plans, extras, allocations and guest messaging with configuration. A custom build is the honest answer when several properties share inventory or accounts, when a property management system needs a deep two-way exchange, or when events and corporate rules go beyond what configuration can express. Discovery tells you which before anything is quoted.

Can the system connect to our property management system and channel manager?

Commonly, yes, and it is scoped as an integration rather than assumed. The property system exchange usually covers availability, reservations and folios. Channel manager and online travel agency connections depend on what each provider exposes, so the scope document states exactly what will be exchanged once we have seen it.

How are group blocks handled?

An allocation block holds a number of rooms of given types for a named organiser until a release date, with its own rate. Guests in the group book against the block by code; unsold rooms return to general sale automatically on the release date, and reservations can see every live block on one screen.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the system can move to another provider.

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