Nathan BrosnanWebsites and software for small businesses in Cork and across Munster

Websites · Nº 002

Cuas BeagDemo

A site for a family guesthouse in West Cork that takes its own bookings, with an availability calendar, German pages and a guide to the area.

Every booking through a booking site costs the owners around 15% in commission. A booking made here costs them nothing.

I made this one to show what a site like this looks like and what it costs. It is not a paying customer's site.

Try the demo site Get a price for one
Cuas Beag on a desktop screenCuas Beag on a phone

The problem

A small guesthouse pays a booking site around 15% of every booking it sends. On three nights in the best room in October, that's about €65 gone before anyone has had breakfast. Plenty of those guests would happily have booked direct, if the guesthouse's own site let them.

What I built

Six pages for a made-up four-room guesthouse between Glandore and Union Hall:

  • A home page led by the place. A full-width photo of the house above the sea, a date search straight under it, a welcome from the owners, the rooms, breakfast and a list of what's within an hour's drive.
  • Rooms with how many each sleeps, the beds, the view, what's included and the price in each season.
  • Explore the area, written as the owners would: beaches, walks, where to eat and days out, each with the driving time.
  • Getting here and questions: directions from Cork city, the airport and Kerry, parking, check-in times, dogs and the cancellation policy.
  • German pages for the home page and the rooms, since German visitors are one of West Cork's biggest markets. A finished site would translate everything; the demo shows how it works.

The booking calendar

Pick the day you arrive and the day you leave. The calendar shows which nights are free, then offers only the rooms that are free for every night of the stay, each with the total at that season's rates. It knows the two-night minimum in summer and the days the house is closed over Christmas. Pick a room, leave your details, and the request is sent.

The availability here is sample data: a year of made-up bookings. On a real site the calendar would read live availability from the guesthouse's booking system or channel manager, so a room booked elsewhere this morning can't be requested here this afternoon. That connection is priced separately, because it depends on the system they already use.

The Cuas Beag home page: a white farmhouse in a field above the sea, with a date search below the headline.
The home page, with the place itself as the picture.
The booking calendar with three nights picked, and the rooms free for all of them with their totals.
Three nights picked: only rooms free for every night are offered, with the total.
The rooms page: the Strand Room with its photo, beds, features and prices for each season.
Each room with its prices by season.
The home page in German.
The home page in German, one click from the English.
The home page on a phone.
On a phone.
The booking calendar on a phone with dates picked.
The calendar on a phone.

Under the hood

  • Plain web pages, built with Astro. The calendar is the only part that runs much script, about 6 KB, and it works from the keyboard as well as the mouse.
  • The German pages are linked to the English ones in the way search engines expect, so a search from Germany finds the German page.
  • Google gets the details it looks for: a Bed and Breakfast listing with check-in times, the number of rooms, the price range and the languages spoken.
  • The photos are free stock photos from Unsplash. None of them is captioned as a place unless I could confirm that's where it was taken.
  • Lighthouse on a phone: 98 to 99 for performance, 100 for accessibility and best practices.

What a site like this costs

From €1,200 for a site like this with a booking request form. Connecting the calendar to a live booking system is quoted per job, since it depends on the system. Hosting and small updates are from €20 a month.

Want one like it?

Email

Email

I'm in Cork, Ireland. Send me an email and I'll reply the same day. If it's easier to talk it through, we'll pick a time for a call. Or write out what you need.