A tourism website has one job: turning someone who came to look into someone who booked. It sounds obvious, yet most sites for apartments, charters and excursions don't do that job: the guest looks, goes back to the portal they came from and books there, with a commission you pay.
This post is about what on a tourism website really changes the number of direct bookings.
Why direct bookings are worth it at all
A middleman's commission is usually 15% to 20%. On a €20,000 season that's €3,000 to €4,000 gone.
A site that takes over even a fifth of those bookings pays for itself in the first season. That's not a promise, it's arithmetic, but it only works if the site does its job.
At White Sail Split, where I built the site and the booking system for boat tours, the key change wasn't the design but that a guest can now book all the way through, in their own language, from a phone, with no emails and no waiting for a reply.
Loading speed is the first hurdle
A guest usually opens your site on a phone, often on roaming data, sometimes on a bad connection at the airport. If the page takes four seconds to load, some people have left before seeing the first photo.
Tourism sites are in a particularly bad position here because they live on photos. The answer isn't fewer photos but properly prepared ones: modern formats, sizes matched to the device, loading what's on screen before the rest.
More on that in what makes a website fast.
The languages your guests actually speak
Croatian and English are the start, not the end. Depending on the market, German and Italian carry a serious share, and Polish and Czech are growing.
What matters is that it's done properly, not through an automatic translator in the corner:
- Every language has its own address, not a parameter in the URL.
hreflangtags tell Google which version is for which market.- Page titles and meta descriptions are translated too, not just the body text.
Automatic translation generally doesn't rank and doesn't convince. A guest spots a bad German sentence as quickly as you'd spot a bad Croatian one. The details are in multilingual websites for Croatian businesses.
An enquiry form that doesn't lose people
The biggest silent loss on tourism sites is the form.
- It asks for too much. Name, email and dates are enough for a first contact. Address and passport number can wait.
- There's no confirmation. The guest sends an enquiry and gets nothing back. They don't know whether it arrived, so they send one through the portal too, and book there.
- No reply the same day. In season, an enquiry that's 24 hours old is a lost enquiry.
- It doesn't work on a phone. A date field that doesn't open on an iPhone costs a booking.
An automatic email confirmation and a clear note of when you reply solve most of the problem.
Booking all the way, or at least to the last step
There are two levels and both are legitimate:
Enquiry with confirmation. The guest sends dates, you confirm. Cheaper to build, works for smaller capacity and for services where the date has to be coordinated.
Booking with payment. The guest picks a date, pays a deposit and gets a confirmation, without a single email in between. More expensive, but for excursions, charters and larger capacity it pays back quickly because it works at night and at weekends.
At the second level the site becomes a web application: a database of free slots, an admin side, payments, confirmations.
Photos and content that convince
The guest decides based on what they see:
- Real photos, not stock. A stock photo of a perfect sea doesn't sell your apartment.
- What the guest really wants to know: the distance to the beach in minutes on foot, whether there's parking, whether the air conditioning works, whether they can arrive late at night.
- Prices, at least a range. A site with no price sends the guest to the portal where the price is shown.
- Reviews. If you have them on the portals, show them on your site too.
Local SEO for tourism
A guest doesn't search for your apartment's name because they don't know it. They search for "apartments Split centre" or "boat tours Split".
What helps there:
- Google Business Profile filled in completely, with photos and reviews.
- Pages per place and per service, not one page covering everything.
- Structured data telling Google you're accommodation or a tour operator, with price and location.
- Content that answers guests' questions: how to get there, when it's best to come, what to do in bad weather.
Seasonality is an advantage, not a problem
A tourism site has an off-season, and that's the best time to work on it.
Bookings for summer start in January and February. A site built in May is a whole year late. Winter is the time for building, fixes and content; summer is for running the business.
Frequently asked questions
Is my own site worth it if I'm already on the portals?
Yes, and the portals stay. The portal brings visibility, the site cuts the commission on part of that traffic. A guest who found you once through a portal often searches for you directly the next time.
How much does a tourism website cost?
A presentation site with an enquiry form is in the range of €500 to €2,000. With a booking and payment system, from €1,400. The ranges are on the pricing page.
Do I need a mobile app?
Almost never. A guest won't install an app for one stay. A good site on a phone does the same job.
Can I change the content and prices myself?
Yes, that's planned for at the start: prices, dates and photos are what change every season.
Where to start
Tell me what you rent out or organise, and where your bookings come from now. That shows whether an enquiry form is enough or a full booking system pays off.
Get in touch or see my work.