Websites for tourism and hospitality in Wales
Tourism websites in Wales: direct bookings instead of commission
A holiday let, a pub with rooms or a campsite in Wales pays the booking platforms a commission on every stay they send, typically around 15% on Booking.com and a similar total on Airbnb once both sides' fees are counted. Twenty stays a year at £600 is £1,800 to the platform, every year. A website that shows availability, takes the booking and turns up for the searches guests make is how that number comes down, and from October 2026 it is also where the visitor register and any council levy are explained before the guest arrives.
The booking path
Five steps from a search to a confirmed stay, and where sites lose the guest
- 1
The search
"Cottage near Aberdaron dog friendly", "pub with rooms Brecon", "campsite Pembrokeshire coast". A page for each property or room type, with the place, the sleeps and the one thing that makes it worth choosing in the first line, is what gets shown. A home page that says "welcome to our beautiful accommodation" gets shown for nothing.
- 2
The property page
Ten photographs of the actual rooms in daylight, what is included, the drive time from Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff, the walk to the beach in minutes, whether dogs and electric cars are welcome. Guests decide here, then look for the price.
- 3
Availability and price
A live calendar, a price per stay rather than per night with the arithmetic hidden, and the levy shown as its own line where a council charges it. A guest who has to email to ask if a week in August is free books somewhere else.
- 4
The booking
The engine you already use, embedded so the guest stays on your site, or a simple one we set up with a deposit through Stripe. Name, dates, card, done, on a phone, in the language the guest chose.
- 5
The confirmation and the return
From your own domain, in Welsh or English to match, with the directions the satnav gets wrong corrected in plain words. A line in it and a card in the cottage point the guest at the site for next year, at the direct price.
The rules that changed
The 182-day rule, the register and the levy, on the site before the guest asks
Since April 2023 a self-catering property in Wales has to be available to let for 252 days a year and actually let for 182 to pay business rates instead of council tax, the toughest threshold in the UK, and the Welsh Government has consulted on letting owners average the 182 over several years. Every direct booking counts towards it without a commission attached.
The Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Act 2025 adds two more. Anyone charging for overnight stays must register with the Welsh Revenue Authority from 1 October 2026; registration is free. Councils may then introduce a visitor levy from April 2027 at the earliest, after a year's notice: £1.30 a person a night for most accommodation, 75p for hostels and campsites. A site that explains both on its own page, and shows the levy as a line in the price where it applies, saves the awkward email on arrival. The names changed too: Snowdonia has used Eryri since 2022 and the Brecon Beacons became Bannau Brycheiniog in 2023, and a property page that says “in Eryri (Snowdonia)” is found by both searches.
The Welsh layer
Enough Welsh to say where the guest is, without translating the terms and conditions
Most guests book in English, including most Welsh speakers. What a tourism site needs from Welsh is the welcome, the place names as the neighbours say them, the walk that ends at Y Felinheli rather than a phonetic guess, and the sentence that says the owners are from here. Welsh-speaking families from Cardiff and the Valleys, a large share of the summer trade in the north and west, notice which sites bothered, and a full second site earns its keep where they are the guests.
Then the photographs: the room, the view from the window, the table laid, the dog on the step, in daylight. The checklist says what to shoot; the monthly work adds a page a month for the things guests search for around you, so the site is found for the place as well as the property. The prices are the same as for any site we build.
Questions businesses in Wales ask us
Should I leave Booking.com and Airbnb?
No. Keep them as adverts and let the site take the repeat and the recommended guests. A guest who has stayed once, or whose friend sent them, does not need a platform; they need your site to show availability and take the booking. That is where the commission stops.
Can the site take bookings itself?
Yes. Either the booking engine you already use, embedded so the guest never leaves the page, or a simple one we set up for a small number of properties with a deposit through Stripe. The channel manager keeps the platforms' calendars in step so nothing is double-booked.
Does a holiday let in Wales need a Welsh website?
It needs Welsh on the website: the welcome, the place names spelt as the locals spell them, the walk to the beach, the pub. A full second site is worth it where the guests are Welsh, which is true near Caernarfon or in the Teifi valley and rarely true for a lodge whose guests come from Birmingham.
What about the register and the levy?
From 1 October 2026 anyone charging for overnight stays in Wales must register with the Welsh Revenue Authority; it is free. Councils can add a visitor levy from April 2027 at the earliest, £1.30 a person a night for most accommodation and 75p for hostels and campsites, with a year's notice. The site shows the levy as a line on the price where a council brings it in.
Work out what the platforms cost you last year
Send your listing and your site, if you have one. You get the commission arithmetic for your own numbers, a review of what a guest sees on a phone, and a fixed price for a site that books.