The story behind building a hotel website agency

I’ve been working as a hotel consultant for a few years now. In every project I take up, the website is always a total mess.

The real issue is that it’s so hard to find a proper hotel website agency. Every time, I’m forced to work with generic agencies who build websites for schools one day and shops the next—they just don’t understand how a hotel works.

Honestly, it has reached a point where I feel embarrassed to show these websites to anyone. I don’t even want to tell people the work was done under my supervision because the quality is just not there.

The problem I kept running into

Here’s what happens every time I talk to a web agency.

I tell them we need a website for this hotel. They say sure, just send us the sitemap and content, and they’ll build it for me.

That doesn’t make sense to me.

To me, the sitemap isn’t just a list of pages. It’s about deciding how guests move through the website, where they go first, what convinces them to book. That’s the actual job I’m paying them to do.

But every agency asks for the same thing. Doesn’t matter if they charge ₹50,000 or ₹5 lakhs. They all want the sitemap upfront. Plus the content. Plus which images to use. Plus the page structure.

At that point, what am I even paying them for? To copy and paste my work into WordPress?

When I finally got fed up

The breaking point came during my Welnez project, a naturopathy retreat I was consulting for in Kerala.

I spoke to five different web agencies. Not small shops. These were the agencies people kept recommending as the best ones in the state.

Same problem with every single one.

I would have to create the sitemap myself. I would have to write the content or spend hours fixing what they wrote. I would have to tell them which images to pick and why. I would have to explain what information guests need before they’ll actually book directly instead of going to MakeMyTrip or Booking.com.

That’s when it hit me. No matter which agency I hire, the hotel team and I will end up doing most of the strategic work anyway.

So what’s the point of hiring them?

Why hotel websites keep failing

These agencies don’t specialize. Today they’re building a website for a restaurant. Tomorrow it’s a school. Next week it’s a hotel. Then an online store.

They’re not hotel website experts. They’re generalists who know how to use WordPress and buy templates.

They don’t understand hospitality-specific challenges. Things like what makes a guest trust your website enough to book directly. Or why guests compare your site with OTA listings before deciding. Or how people actually browse hotel websites on their phones. Or what conversion really means for the hospitality industry. It’s not just putting a Book Now button somewhere.

To them, a hotel website just means nice photos and a booking form.

They’ve never run a hotel. They’ve never dealt with OTA commissions eating into your revenue. They’ve never watched guests leave your beautiful website to book on Booking.com because something didn’t feel trustworthy enough.

Why I’m building a hotel website agency

That’s why I started building Portico Webworks.

It’s the hotel website agency I kept trying to hire but could never find.

We only work with hotels. That’s it. No restaurants, no schools, no e-commerce stores. Just hotels.

We don’t ask you to create the sitemap, write the content, or decide what goes where. That’s our job. You give us access to your property, we interview you about what makes it special, and we deliver a complete website built to convert browsers into direct bookers. You review and approve, not create and hand over.

We understand the hospitality industry because I’ve lived it. I’ve run hotel operations. I’ve dealt with OTAs. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t when it comes to direct bookings.

I got tired of doing the agency’s job for them and still having to pay their bill.

If this sounds familiar

If you’ve ever felt this same frustration, you’re not alone.

If you’ve been stuck between expensive agencies who don’t understand hotels and cheap agencies who just use the same generic template for everyone, that’s exactly why I’m building this hotel website agency.

Hotel websites shouldn’t push guests to OTAs. They should convert browsers into direct bookers.

That’s what Portico Webworks does. And that’s why we exist.