Websites for hotels and B&Bs on Lake Garda.
A site that loads fast, reads well on a phone, speaks your guests' language and collects enquiries without you losing an email. Built with the right SEO foundations from day one.
I won't promise guaranteed direct bookings: on Garda the competition from OTAs and nearby properties is real, and rankings are built over time with ongoing SEO work. What I can guarantee is a solid base for that work to build on.
Does any of this sound familiar?
These are the situations I find most often when I open the website of a Garda property. None is dramatic on its own. Together, they cost you enquiries every week.
The site is hard to read on a phone
The site was built years ago, most visits come from smartphones, and guests have to pinch and zoom to read the text.
People searching your area don't find you
Search for "hotel in Sirmione" or "B&B Lazise" and the OTAs and portals come up. Your site, if it shows at all, is much further down.
The rooms aren't clear
Few photos, no page with size, amenities and the differences between room types. The guest can't choose and goes elsewhere.
Asking about availability means writing an email
No form, no link to the booking engine, no immediate contact. Every enquiry becomes a manual step.
The site is in Italian only
On Garda a large share of guests are German, English or from Eastern Europe. A single-language site shuts out anyone who reads only their own.
Nobody knows what the site delivers
There are no reliable statistics, the forms aren't tracked, and there's no way to say how many enquiries came from the site.
What an OTA commission really weighs
Booking portal commissions usually fall between 15% and 25%, depending on the contract and the visibility programmes the property joins. On €60,000 of intermediated revenue, an average 18% commission means about €10,800 a year that never stays with the property.
That said, anyone who promises to eliminate OTAs is selling you an illusion. Portals bring volume and visibility that a small property can hardly match alone, and for many properties they remain a perfectly sensible channel.
The realistic goal is a different one: winning back a share of bookings on the direct channel over time. Someone who saw you on a portal then searches for the property's name on Google. If they find a credible site at that moment, with real photos, clear terms and an immediate way to ask about availability, some of those people book with you. If they find a site from 2014, they go back to the portal.
Example numbers, not a forecast. They only show the order of magnitude we're talking about.
What goes into a well-made website for an accommodation business
Eight elements that aren't optional. If one is missing, the SEO work that follows starts uphill.
Structure built for local search
Separate pages for the property, rooms, services and location, with the right geographic references: town, lake, real distances from points of interest.
Speed and optimised images
Photos compressed in modern formats, progressive loading, Core Web Vitals kept under control even on image-heavy galleries.
Complete room pages
Room type, size, maximum occupancy, included amenities, a dedicated gallery. Everything a guest needs to decide without writing an email.
Availability request always visible
Enquiry form and direct contact reachable from every page, with WhatsApp and phone prominent on mobile.
Real multilingual setup
Not a machine translation pasted on top: separate pages for each language, dedicated URLs and correct hreflang tags.
Structured data for accommodation
Hotel, LodgingBusiness and FAQ schema in JSON-LD, so Google and AI assistants read address, amenities and answers to common questions correctly.
Written copy, not filler
Content written for someone choosing where to sleep and, at the same time, readable by search engines. No empty phrases.
Control over your content
A simple panel to update periods, offers, photos and text without having to call someone every time.
The booking engine stays yours
If you already use a booking engine, the site connects to it: an availability widget in the site's design, a "check availability" button on every room page, a clean handoff to the booking page.
If you don't have one, I help you choose without tying you to a vendor: we look at costs, commissions and the channel manager connection based on how many rooms you run.
The booking engine connection is included in the Top package. The vendor's licences and fees stay with the property.
Multilingual built properly, not machine-translated
Each language has its own pages and URLs, with correct hreflang tags: that's how foreign markets get indexed, instead of staying hidden behind an automatic translator.
The site can be built in any language: these four are simply the most useful for the Garda area.
Three packages, prices stated up front
Starting prices, VAT excluded. The final quote depends on rooms, pages and languages. Domain, hosting and third-party licences are not included.
Small properties, B&Bs, guesthouses
- Site of up to 6 pages, responsive
- Home, rooms, services, where we are, contact
- Optimised, fast gallery
- Availability request form with anti-spam
- Basic technical SEO and Hotel structured data
- Two languages (Italian plus one of your choice)
- Google Business Profile set up properly
- GDPR-compliant cookie banner and privacy pages
- Analytics configured, with form tracking
Hotels that want to cut manual work
- Everything in the Base package
- Up to 12 pages, three languages
- Chatbot trained on your property: hours, services, pets, parking, check-in
- Pages dedicated to experiences and the area
- Blog set up and ready to use
- FAQ schema and content optimised for AI answers
- Integrated WhatsApp contact
- Offers and seasonal packages page
Properties with a booking engine and stronger seasonality
- Everything in the Premium package
- Four languages (Italian, English, German, Russian)
- Connection to the booking engine you already use, or help choosing one
- Availability widget matching the site's design
- Dedicated landing pages for campaigns and specific periods
- GEO optimisation: content built to be cited by AI assistants
- One-to-one training on using the panel
- Three months of support after launch
Search engine ranking work is not included in the packages: it's an ongoing activity, assessed separately once the site is online and has started collecting data.
From the first audit to launch
Four phases, timings stated in advance. On average the site goes live four to seven weeks after confirmation.
Free audit
I look at your current site, how you rank for searches in your area, what nearby properties are doing and where you're losing enquiries. I send you the result in writing, no obligation.
Structure and content
We decide together which pages you need, we gather photos and information, I write the copy in Italian and prepare it for translation.
Design and development
I build the site and connect forms, languages and any booking engine. You see previews as we go, not only at the end.
Launch and measurement
We go live, I set up Search Console and analytics, and I show you how to read the data. Ongoing SEO work starts from here, and it's a separate, later decision.
Lake Garda and the surrounding area
I work with accommodation businesses on the Brescia and Verona shores of the lake, in the Mantua hinterland and in the cities of Verona and Mantua. In person when we need to meet, remotely for everything else.
I'm Ekaterina Ponchak
I've worked in digital marketing for over twenty-five years, and for a few years now I've also been building the sites myself, instead of just telling developers what they should do. That's why the pages I deliver come with the right SEO structure from the start: there's no handover where things get lost.
I work in Italian, Russian and English, with B2B and B2C clients. On Garda I work with accommodation businesses, but also with tourism and service companies, from local search to managing the Google Business Profile.
If you'd rather see concrete results before talking about quotes, the case studies show what was done and what changed.