For small hotels
The booking platforms bring you strangers, for a commission. Your own site is for everyone else: past guests, their families, people who heard your name. I design, write and build it so they can call, WhatsApp or book with you directly. One fixed price: US$7,500.
We talk on video before you pay anything.
Calls on weekdays, 15:30–19:00 India time, plus Tuesday and Thursday 06:00 and Thursday 19:30. All call times
The proof
The Grand Ambassador in Phagwara, Punjab, and the site I built for it, as it runs today. Most of its bookings still start with a call or a WhatsApp message. The site gives three ways to book direct, and sends nobody to a booking site.
In WhatsAppHello — I would like to ask about the Twin Room at The Grand Ambassador. Dates: Guests:
Two blanks, then send
Every room starts its own message, with the room named and a line each for dates and guests. In Punjab, WhatsApp is the front desk, and a son abroad booking for his parents can forward it.
The near one and the far one
Two minutes’ walk from the station, and 27 km from the nearest airport, said the same way. The inconvenient answer, given plainly, makes the others easier to believe.
The rating, then the words
A star rating is easy to doubt. A guest’s own paragraph about the thing they noticed is harder to fake, so the site quotes it whole and links to the reviews themselves.
“What I liked is that he came and saw the property first, and then wrote the site around what is actually here — the banquet hall, Bellers, the rooftop, the rooms. He did not use stock photographs. When I asked for changes he made them the same week. For any hotel owner in Punjab thinking about this, that is the part that matters.”
Drafted by me from the project record. He chose this version and approved it in September 2026.
Rather hear it from him? Ask, and I’ll ask the hotel’s owner whether he will talk to you. Ask on WhatsApp (opens WhatsApp in a new tab) Ask by email
Hear me walk through a hotel’s site on a phone, in my own voice (about a minute and a half).
On a laptop? Point your phone’s camera here to open the hotel’s site there.
Direct bookings, honestly
Booking platforms are good at one thing: putting your rooms in front of people who have never heard of you. You pay a commission on each of those bookings, at the rate in your contract. For a guest you would never have met, that can be a fair price.
The waste is the guest who already knew you. A past guest, a wedding party’s cousins, a son abroad booking a room for his parents. They search for your name, find a platform’s page first, and book there, because your own site made it harder.
So the site has one job for them: make booking with you the easiest thing on the page.
By phone, on WhatsApp with the room already written (or by email, where your guests don’t use WhatsApp), or on your own booking engine. The site describes the hotel, and the engine quotes the price, so a rate is never right in one place and out of date in the other.
What I can’t tell you is how many bookings will move. Nobody honest can before a site is live, and I have no before-and-after figures to show you. If numbers matter to you, we agree at the start what to count.
Since 14 November 2024, Booking.com has had to let hotels offer better prices and conditions on other channels, their own websites included. Booking.com says it no longer uses parity clauses in Europe. Elsewhere, read your own contract.
European Commission, 14 November 2024, under the Digital Markets Act, Article 5(3). Booking.com newsroom, 16 February 2026. The Commission (opens in a new tab) Booking.com (opens in a new tab)
Google’s free booking links can show your own booking site beside the platforms when people search for hotels, and Google says there is no cost for clicks on them. It needs a booking engine that can send Google your rates: ask your provider.
Google Hotel Center Help, “About hotel free booking links”, read 25 September 2026. Google’s page (opens in a new tab)
A price shown to guests must include every mandatory fee and charge; adding them later is drip pricing, which the law now bans. One more reason the site never quotes a rate your engine controls: the engine shows the whole price, once.
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, in force from 6 April 2025; CMA, Price transparency (CMA209), 18 November 2025. The guidance (opens in a new tab)
Since 12 May 2025, any business that shows a price for short-term lodging, its own website included, must show the total price up front, with every mandatory fee in it, and more prominently than any other price. Government taxes and optional extras can be added later, if they are disclosed before payment.
Federal Trade Commission, Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 CFR Part 464; the FTC’s questions and answers, May 2025. The FTC’s page (opens in a new tab)
What the site does
Rates and availability stay in your booking engine, which you already change yourself. The site describes the hotel, so it needs changing far less often.
Top right on every page on a laptop. On a phone, Call, WhatsApp and Book stay fixed under the thumb, at every scroll.
Each room and each event space starts its own message, named, with blanks for the dates and the guests.
The guest’s dates go straight to your booking engine. The site never quotes a rate the engine controls.
Rooms, dining, a wedding, a night on business: different guests, each with its own first line.
I write the shot list for your photographer. The photography itself is not in the price.
The station, the bus, the airport, and how long each takes, including the far one.
A study
The proof above is a city hotel in India. This is the first screen I would draw for a country inn in North America or Britain, where guests ring or email, not WhatsApp. It is not a client: nobody asked for it and nobody paid for it.
A study, not a client
Unsolicited, and made up: a nine-room inn in Vermont, open most of the year. Drawn from how a small inn sells, and from the FTC’s total-price rule, not from anyone’s site.
For an inn I can’t visit, the first step would be a walk round it with you on video. A drawing, not a design: the words and the look come from you, on the call and in the Site plan. Send me your inn’s site for a free review
The price
The whole site: structure, every word, design and a custom-coded build. Fixed, and agreed in writing first.
Up to 12 pages; an extra page is US$400, writing included. Most sites take six to nine weeks from the Site plan to launch, including your review time.
An ordinary bank transfer in your own currency (US dollars, pounds, euros, Canadian dollars and more) to a local account in your country; no international wire. Or by Wise. In New Zealand and the Gulf, you pay in US dollars by bank transfer or Wise. Or by card, through the link on your invoice.
Your price in your currency is fixed on the day you sign.
Before you payPayment details only ever come from aditya@growmintmedia.in, and they never change by email. If a message says they have, WhatsApp me before you pay. Why that address
Half an hour, before you pay anything.
Within 10 working days: the page list, every page’s structure and your home page’s first words, in writing. Yours to keep, and credited in full to the build for six months. If I can’t visit, I ask you to walk me round your premises on video first. See an example
Not with you within 10 working days? The US$750 comes back in full. If the Site plan is no use to you, tell me within 7 days of receiving it and the US$750 comes back in full. Once per business.
40% of the price, less the US$750.
Your real words in place, corrected by you.
Live on your domain. The hosting goes into your name at launch.
US$7,500 in all. The US$750 counts towards it.
Founding places for the first three clients outside India from October 2026, in return for a named case study and one reference call. Both schedules, drawn to scale
What if I hate the design, or you disappear? The terms, before you sign anything
Questions
I can’t promise that, and I won’t. It makes booking with you easier for the guests who already want to. How many do depends on your rooms, your prices and your reviews. If numbers matter to you, we agree at the start what to count, so you can see for yourself.
Not because of a website. They bring you guests you would not otherwise meet, and that is what their commission pays for. Your own site is for the guests who already know your name.
Prices and availability, yes: they live in your booking engine, which you change yourself, and the site links to it. The rest of the site is custom-coded, with no page builder, so you can’t drag things about the way you can on Squarespace or Wix. You send the change instead: the first 30 days are included, then Care is US$150 a month with up to an hour of changes, or a small change costs from US$100. If you change your pages every week and enjoy doing it, tell me on the call: a site you edit yourself may suit you better, and I’ll say so.
Your domain stays in your name, with the registrar you choose. Your email stays where it is: on the day, I change only the records that point your domain at the new site, and we test mail in and out. The addresses guests use today are sent on to the pages that replace them. Keep the old plan until 30 days after launch, so we can switch back if anything goes wrong; then cancel the site plan yourself, not the domain or the email. If your domain was bought from Wix, there may be one more step, weeks before launch, and I explain it in the Site plan. The hosting goes into your name at launch, and I tell you what it will cost before launch.
No. The site works with the one you have, or with calls and WhatsApp alone. Choosing and setting up an engine isn’t in the price, but I’ll tell you what to ask a provider, including whether it can show your rates in Google’s free booking links.
The same steps, in rupees, on a rupee quote plus 18% GST. The Site plan is 10% of the quote, plus GST, and it is credited in full to the build. We talk on video first, before you pay anything.
You can ask. Write on WhatsApp or by email, and I’ll ask the owner of The Grand Ambassador whether he will talk to you.
You walk me round it on a video call, showing only rooms that are empty, and I ask what your guests ask. I write your site from what I see. I never ask to see a guest, and if one comes into view, the camera turns away. I take notes and a few still pictures of empty rooms; the call itself isn’t recorded unless you say yes first.
Yes, and before you pay anything: half an hour on video. Calls start on weekdays from 15:30 to 18:30 India time, plus Tuesday and Thursday at 06:00 and Thursday at 19:30 India time, so one of them falls inside most working days: see the call times at the end of this page. WhatsApp calls are welcome in studio hours.
Begin
How guests find you, who rings the front desk, what they ask before they book. Tell me on a call or in writing, and I’ll tell you what the site should be, and whether you need a new one at all.
Call times
Calls start from 15:30 to 18:30 India time, Monday to Friday, plus Tuesday and Thursday 06:00 and Thursday 19:30. Half an hour, free, before you pay anything. WhatsApp calls are welcome in studio hours. The booking page is run by Cal.com and shows every free time in your own time zone; nothing on this site loads from it.WhatsApp or email me two or three times that suit you, and I’ll send a video link.
I am a sole proprietor, registered for GST in India with a number you can check, and I build one site at a time. Who I am, and four checks you can make.
P.S. Write at any hour. I reply within one working day.
Or start here, free
I open it on a phone and read it the way a guest would. Usually within one working day you get the three changes I’d make first, in writing, yours to keep whether or not we ever work together. While I’m building a site I take two reviews a week; if yours has to wait, I tell you the day it will come.
See one, done on my own old site
Nothing is sent from this page. Your email or WhatsApp opens with the message written, and you press send. How your details are handled.