A holiday let website is your own booking page for your cottage, barn or flat, separate from the platforms you list on. Its job is to carry your full photo set, your availability, your house rules and honest detail about the area, so guests who find you (or who stayed last year) can book with you directly instead of paying platform fees. Most owners keep the platforms and run the site alongside them.
Why bother when the platforms already fill your calendar?
Because the platform owns the relationship and takes a cut of every stay. You pay a fee on bookings, guests pay a fee on top, and the guest's email address usually stays inside the platform. If you ever want to contact last August's family about this August, you need a route that does not depend on someone else's messaging system.
A website gives you that route. It also gives you somewhere to say things the listing format squeezes out: how the lane floods in winter, which pub does food on a Monday, why the stairs are not right for a toddler. Guests who read all that before booking tend to arrive expecting what they actually get.
Being honest about it, the platforms are good at one thing you will struggle to match: putting your property in front of people who have never heard of it. Most holiday let owners should treat the website as the place repeat and word of mouth guests land, not as a replacement for discovery.
When a holiday let website is not worth it
If you let six weeks a year to friends of friends and you are already full, a website will not change much. If the property is a single room in your own house and the platform handles the vetting, ID checks and payments you would rather not handle yourself, that convenience may be worth the fee.
And if you have one property, no photos worth showing and no appetite to answer enquiry emails, a site will sit there doing very little. The sites that earn their keep belong to owners who answer messages quickly, keep the calendar honest and actually email past guests. Everything below assumes you will do those three things.
What a holiday cottage website needs on it
Less than you think, but each part done properly. A single property usually fits comfortably in five pages, with a longer local area section if you want it.
- A home page that says where you are and who fits. "Two bedroom stone cottage on the edge of the North York Moors, sleeps four, dog friendly" beats any amount of atmospheric writing.
- The property page. Room by room, with ceiling heights, bed sizes, what is in the kitchen, parking, wifi, how the heating works and whether there is a bath as well as a shower.
- Availability and prices. Changeover day, minimum stay, peak and off peak rates, deposit, cleaning fee, extra charges for dogs or cots. Nothing hidden until the final screen.
- House rules and practical bits. Arrival and departure times, smoking, parties, maximum occupancy, the key safe, what happens if a guest arrives at midnight.
- The area. Walks from the door, beaches, the nearest shop that opens on Sunday, where to park in town, the two good places to eat and the one that is overrated.
- Reviews. Pull a handful of your best platform reviews onto the site with a first name and a month.
- Contact, with a real phone number. People booking a week with their family want to know a person exists.
Access, accessibility and the awkward truths
Say if there are three steps to the front door, if the lane is single track, if the bathroom is downstairs, if there is no mobile signal on the network most people use. Owners worry this loses bookings. It loses the wrong bookings, which is the ones that turn into a complaint and a two star review.
Photos are the whole job
Nobody books a cottage they cannot picture. The listing platforms crop and compress; your own site can show the full set at a decent size. Shoot on a bright day with the lights on, curtains open, beds made properly and every surface clear. Phone cameras are fine if the light is good.
Cover the obvious shots and the ones people secretly want: every bedroom from the doorway, the bathroom, the kitchen worktop, the view from the main window, the outside space, the parking, the front door with the key safe, and the lane or approach. A floor plan sketch helps more than most owners expect.
Big photos do slow a page down if they are uploaded straight off the camera, and a sluggish site on a phone in a car park loses people. Why a slow website costs you work covers what actually makes the difference. On our sites images are resized and compressed as part of the build, so you can send the big originals and not think about it.
How to handle availability and taking the booking
This is the part owners agonise over. There are three sensible approaches and the cheapest one is often the right one.
- An enquiry form plus a calendar you keep up to date. Guest sees the free weeks, sends dates, you reply with a price and take payment by bank transfer or a payment link. Simple, free, and fine for one property with a handful of changeovers a month.
- An online booking form on the site. Guests pick dates and submit a request, which lands in your inbox so you can confirm. Online bookings are included on our Business tier and are an option at £20 a month plus VAT on the other tiers.
- A dedicated holiday let booking system embedded in your pages. If you run several properties and need live calendar sync with the platforms so you never double book, this is what you want. There are specialist providers in this market and we will happily embed one in your site, but you buy that tool from them, not from us.
Whichever you pick, the double booking risk is real. If your calendar lives in two places, decide which one is the master and update it the same day a booking comes in.
The local area pages are what get you found
People search for "cottage with hot tub near Bakewell" and "dog friendly holiday let Northumberland coast", not for your property's name. A page about the area, written like a local rather than a tourist board, gives Google something to understand you by and gives guests something genuinely useful to read.
Write one page per real theme: dog friendly walks from the door, a wet weather day out list, where to eat within ten minutes, the nearest beach with parking details. Each one wants a few hundred words of specific detail, not three paragraphs of adjectives. Extra pages on our packages are £10 a month plus VAT each, or five for £40 a month plus VAT, so this is cheap depth.
Every tier includes a service area map, which is handy for showing how far you are from the station, the beach and the main towns. For the broader picture of how local search works, getting found on Google when you only work locally is worth ten minutes. Set up a Google Business Profile for the property too, if you have not.
Turning one stay into a repeat direct booking
The economics of a holiday let website live here. A guest who comes back every year and books direct is worth far more than the site costs, and the people most likely to do that are the ones who already loved the place.
- Put the web address in the welcome folder, on the key fob, on the fridge magnet and on the back of the bathroom door.
- Ask for an email address at some point during the stay, with permission to send next year's dates.
- Email past guests once, in the autumn, when next summer opens. Once. Not monthly.
- Offer returning guests something concrete: first refusal on their week, or a slightly earlier check in.
- Keep a blog if you have things to say about the area, and add a seasonal post now and then. A blog is included on every tier except Starter, where it is £10 a month plus VAT.
What a holiday let website costs to rent
One property with a handful of area pages fits Starter, up to 5 pages, at £49 a month plus VAT. Add the blog and a couple of extra pages and you are still under £80. If you want ten pages, so the property, several area guides and a blog, Essential is £79 a month plus VAT. Running three or four cottages under one brand, Professional at £99 a month plus VAT for up to 15 pages usually covers it.
You pay the first three months up front to start, there is no setup fee and no contract, and you can cancel any month with a month's notice. Hosting, SSL, business email, a free .co.uk domain, the Nova editor so you can change prices and availability yourself, galleries, FAQs, reviews and a free redesign every year are all included. AI copywriting and AI images come free too, though for a holiday let your own photos will almost always beat anything generated, and your own description of the place will sound like you. If you want a hand getting that written, read writing the words for your own website.
You can also buy the site outright, either at the start or later: a 5 page Starter is £1,188 one off plus VAT, a 10 page Essential £1,788. After that, hosting, support and the editor are £250 a year or £30 a month. Should you own your website or rent it? works through which suits a seasonal business. To check your own numbers, price up your website in a couple of minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Will a website stop me needing Airbnb or Booking.com?
Unlikely, and that is not really the aim. The platforms are good at reaching people who have never heard of your cottage. A website is where repeat guests, recommendations and people who searched for your area directly can book without fees. Most owners run both and gradually shift more of their calendar to direct over a few seasons.
Can I show live availability on my own site?
Yes, in a few ways. The simplest is a calendar you update yourself when bookings come in. If you need live sync across several listing sites so you cannot double book, you will want a specialist holiday let booking system, which we can embed into your pages. You buy that tool separately from its provider.
How many pages does one holiday cottage need?
Usually four to six: home, the property, availability and prices, the area, house rules and contact. If you want separate guides to walks, days out and places to eat, add a page each at £10 a month plus VAT, or move up to the 10 page Essential tier at £79 a month plus VAT.
What if I let two or three properties?
Give each one its own page with its own photo set, availability and sleeping arrangements, under a shared brand. Fifteen pages on Professional at £99 a month plus VAT is normally enough for three or four properties plus the area content. Keep the booking route identical across all of them so guests are not confused.
Can I pause the site out of season?
There is no pause option, but there is no contract either, so you can cancel any month with a month's notice. In practice most owners keep the site live all year, because autumn and winter are when people book next summer and when your email to last year's guests needs somewhere to land.
Where this leaves you
A holiday let website does not have to be clever. Good photos, honest detail, a calendar you keep current, proper local content and an easy way to book are the whole job, and the return comes from guests who book direct the second and third time. Keep the platforms for reach while the direct side builds.
RentAWeb builds and runs small business websites for a monthly fee, from £49 a month plus VAT, with no contract and no setup fee. Everything is done remotely by phone, email and video from Grantham, and you can see who you would be dealing with or look at what a rented website costs before you talk to anyone.
