A hotel website in the US typically costs $2,000–$8,000 for a template-based brochure site and $10,000–$50,000 for a custom build, according to Hooray Agency's 2026 pricing guide. Plugging in a third-party booking engine adds a setup fee of roughly $500–$5,000, then a monthly subscription or a per-booking fee. Building your own booking platform is a different product, and a slightly older Attract Group guide prices a custom engine with PMS and channel manager links at $60,000–$150,000.
Most confusing quotes come from mixing those two products up. Below I split them apart, price each piece with US sources, and show how I've handled the booking hand-off on real hotel sites.
Why do hotel website quotes vary so much?
Because "hotel website" can mean two very different things: a brochure site linked to a booking engine you rent, or a full booking platform you own. The second costs several times more.
- A brochure site with a booking engine plugged in. The website sells the stay: rooms, photos, location, offers, dining, weddings, reviews. When a guest clicks Book Now, they move into a booking engine someone else runs, such as Cloudbeds, SiteMinder, Mews or a brand system like IHG's. You pay for the website once and rent the engine.
- A full booking platform. You own the availability search, rate rules, payments and the sync with your property management system (PMS) and channel manager. That's software development, and it's priced like software.
Almost every independent hotel, inn or boutique property needs the first one. If one quote is three times another, check which of the two you've actually been quoted for.
How much does a hotel website cost in the US by tier?
Published US ranges run from $2,000–$8,000 for a template brochure site to $10,000–$50,000 for a custom hotel website, with a custom booking engine at $60,000–$150,000. These are market ranges, not my prices. Agencies and estimator sites each have their own angle, so use them to judge where a quote should sit rather than as a price list.
| Tier | What you get | Typical US cost |
|---|---|---|
| Template brochure site | Pre-built theme, your photos and copy, a Book Now button | $2,000–$8,000 |
| Hotel site built by a freelancer (estimator range) | Custom design on a CMS, booking engine linked | $4,350–$17,400 |
| Hotel site built by an agency (estimator range) | Similar scope plus project management and QA | $10,150–$40,600 |
| Custom hotel website | Bespoke design, more page types and integrations | $10,000–$50,000 |
| Booking engine setup | Connecting a third-party engine to the site | $500–$5,000 |
| Custom booking engine | Your own reservation software with PMS, channel manager and payments | $60,000–$150,000 |
General WordPress pricing lines up with this. OuterBox puts a basic professional small-business WordPress site at $2,500 to $10,000+ and a custom lead-generation site at $10,000 to $35,000+. A hotel usually lands in the upper half of the first band or in the second, because it needs more templates than a typical service business. For the wider picture, see my guide to WordPress website costs in the US.
How much does a brochure hotel website cost?
Roughly $2,000–$8,000 on a template, with estimator ranges of $4,350–$17,400 from a freelancer and $10,150–$40,600 from an agency. For a single property, this is where most of the build budget goes. What moves the price:
- Number of templates. Rooms, offers, meetings, weddings, dining and local guides each need their own layout.
- Custom design or template. A Figma design built pixel for pixel costs more than restyling a theme, but it looks like your hotel instead of everyone else's.
- Photography and video. A video hero only works if the footage is good and the file is compressed properly.
- Forms and CRM. Meeting, group and wedding enquiries need to land somewhere your sales team actually checks.
- Accessibility and speed. Both are cheaper to build in than to bolt on later.
You don't always need the whole site rebuilt. For Warren House, a hotel and wedding venue in Kingston, I built a new homepage in Elementor Pro rather than a new site. It has a video hero, puts the rooms first and pulls Google reviews onto the page. If your inner pages are fine and it's the homepage that doesn't sell, that's a much smaller job than a full redesign.
When the whole site does need replacing, I build hotel sites on WordPress with Bricks, Elementor or Oxygen, so the hotel team can update rooms and offers without calling me.
What does booking engine integration cost?
In the US, expect a one-off setup of about $500–$5,000, then a running fee. Project Cost Estimator puts a booking engine or channel manager at $100–$400 a month plus per-booking fees, and Zio Advertising says engines charge either 1–5% per reservation or a flat $50–$300 a month. Which model works out cheaper depends on how many bookings you take.
On Crowne Plaza London Kingston I rebuilt the site on WordPress and Elementor and linked the rooms to IHG's booking system. The hotel didn't need its own engine, because the IHG brand already runs one. The website's job was to present the rooms, take meeting enquiries through forms and push offers with promo popups. Then it handed guests to IHG to finish the booking.
I think that split is the cheapest and safest pattern for most hotels, branded or independent. The website and the booking engine each do one job, and you can swap either one without rebuilding the other. The integration work itself is mostly Book Now buttons on every room page, a date search that passes guests into the engine, styling the engine to match your brand where it allows, and tracking across the hand-off. If you're weighing a WordPress booking plugin against an external engine, I compare them in hotel booking engine on WordPress: plugin or external?
Get the booking engine priced on its own line
Ask for the website build, the booking engine's setup fee and the engine's monthly or per-booking fee as separate lines. A cheap build tied to a 5% commission engine can cost more over three years than a pricier build on a flat fee.
If you also sell events, afternoon teas or wedding showcases, those often don't fit a room booking engine. On the Ravens Ait venue site I built 20+ event pages with Stripe bookings and HubSpot forms. That's the kind of work my booking and event landing pages with Stripe service covers.
When does a custom booking platform make sense?
Hardly ever for a single property. It costs around $60,000–$150,000, and after launch every bug is yours. The same Attract Group guide, which is a couple of years old now, prices a direct-booking hotel site at $20,000–$60,000, a custom booking engine at $60,000–$150,000, and an OTA or marketplace platform at $150,000–$400,000+.
Owning the engine means owning availability sync, rate rules and payment security too. It can make sense for a hotel group with shared inventory across properties, for packages the off-the-shelf engines can't model, or for a business that's really a marketplace. Everyone else is better off renting a proven engine and spending the difference on the website and marketing.
What does GA4 tracking add to the cost?
GA4 itself is free. What you pay for is a few hours of developer setup, mostly cross-domain tracking between the website and the booking engine. When a guest leaves your domain for the engine's domain, a basic GA4 setup breaks the session. The booking either goes missing or gets credited to your own website as a referral, and you can't tell which ad or page produced it.
Doing it properly means cross-domain measurement between your site and the engine, a purchase event with revenue fired from the confirmation page, and Book Now clicks tracked as key events. Many booking engines support GA4 or Google Tag Manager. Some don't, so ask before you sign.
I couldn't find a reliable published US price for GA4 setup on its own. It's usually quoted as a few hours of developer time. My GA4 and Tag Manager setup guide walks through the events.
What does a hotel website cost to run each year?
Managed WordPress hosting starts at about $30–$35 a month, and the booking engine adds $100–$400 a month or 1–5% per reservation. The build is a one-off; these are the lines that keep coming back:
| Running cost | Typical US range |
|---|---|
| Managed WordPress hosting | From about $30–$35 a month |
| Booking engine, flat fee | $100–$400 a month plus per-booking fees |
| Booking engine, commission model | 1–5% per reservation |
Accessibility matters more for US hotels than for most businesses. Hotels are covered by the ADA, and website accessibility claims against hotels are common. If the site wasn't built for it, a one-off accessibility remediation typically costs $2,500–$25,000, far more than building it right the first time. I cover that in ADA website compliance costs. For updates, backups and security, see what WordPress maintenance costs in the US.
Is a direct booking website worth it against OTA commission?
For most independent hotels, yes. OTAs typically take a 15–25% base commission, while a direct booking costs about $3–$7. Move even a modest number of room nights from OTAs to your own site and the savings start paying for the build.
15–25%
Typical base OTA commission for independent hotels
$3–$7
Typical cost of a direct booking
$40–$50
Commission on a $200 night at 20–25%
Hospitality Net says most independent hotels pay a 15–25% base commission to OTAs, and more once promotions and cancellations are counted. Hotel-Online compares that with $3–$7 for a direct booking. Little Hotelier gives the example of a $200 room at 20–25% sending $40–$50 to the OTA.
Here's a rough illustration. If your website moved 100 room nights a year from an OTA to direct, at $200 a night and 20% commission, you'd keep $4,000 of commission, before the direct booking's own costs. OTAs are still useful for getting found by new guests. Your website's job is to win the people who already know your name, and the ones coming back. I go deeper on this in direct booking site vs Booking.com commission.
How long does a hotel website take to build?
Typically 5–14 weeks from brief to launch, according to Project Cost Estimator. The build is rarely what holds things up. Photos, final copy, getting the booking engine account set up and, for branded hotels, brand approval usually decide the launch date. A homepage-only project like Warren House moves much faster than a full rebuild. There's more on this in how long it takes to build a website.
What should you ask a developer before you hire?
Find out what the quote includes, who owns each account, and how bookings, accessibility and old URLs will be handled. Here's what I'd ask:
- Is the booking engine in this quote, or only a button that links to it?
- Will bookings be tracked across domains in GA4, with revenue?
- Who owns the domain, hosting, GA4 property and booking engine account? (It should be you.)
- Can my team edit rooms, offers and events without you?
- Which accessibility standard do you build to, and how do you test it?
- Will you add Hotel schema markup? (My free Schema Markup Generator writes it.)
- How will you redirect old URLs so rankings survive? This is where redesigns usually lose traffic.
If you're comparing markets, I've also priced hotel websites in the UK and in India.
What's the next step?
Write down your room types, the pages you need and which booking engine you use or are looking at. My free Project Scope Generator turns that into a structured page list in a few minutes. Then book a 20-minute discovery call and I'll tell you which tier your hotel actually needs, and what you can leave out.
