The question arrives the same way almost every time. The owner of a penzion in the Krkonoše mountains, a set of apartments on Lipno, or a small hotel in Prague 7 asks: "We're on Booking. Do we even need our own website?" And then, when we say yes: "So why not leave Booking altogether?"
Both questions are the wrong shape, because "Booking or your own website" is a false dilemma. For the large majority of Czech accommodation owners the answer is both, with a clear division of labour. This piece sets out that division, what each side costs in the Czech market, and what a website has to do to be more than a business card with a phone number on it.
What Booking costs a Czech property
Booking.com's commission for Czech properties runs around fifteen percent at the base, plus a payment-handling fee of roughly 1.3 percent when Booking processes the guest's card, plus more for every programme you switch on: Genius, Preferred Partner, promotional rates. Those are not our figures. Aleš Kubica of Bohemian Cottage in Kamenná Horka published them in a piece on why he left Booking. His reason was not the commission. It was ratings: the algorithm cut his score over reviews from guests who had not read what the listing clearly stated, and the platform did not stand behind him as a partner.
That is the second cost of Booking, the one that never appears on an invoice. You do not own the guest's contact details, you do not control how the platform ranks you, and when the algorithm changes you drop without warning. The full maths of commission and cancellations is a separate piece; in short, an OTA booking cancels twice as often as a direct one, so the true cost per stayed night is higher than fifteen percent.
Why Google shows Booking above you
Search your penzion's name. For many Czech properties the first result is Booking.com, the second is Mapy.cz or Firmy.cz, and the property's own website is somewhere below, if it appears at all. Booking invests in your name; it buys ads on your property's name, and its page about you is usually better structured than yours.
A guest who searched your name already wanted you. If the first result sends them to Booking, you paid commission on a booking you had for free. So the website has one non-negotiable job: be the first result for your own name. That means correct structured data about the property, a current business profile on Google and on Firmy.cz, the same name, address and phone number everywhere, and a page that actually answers to your name rather than showing a photo of the facade.
What Seznam is still for
A foreign guest finds you on Google. A Czech guest still often starts on Seznam, on Mapy.cz or Firmy.cz, especially for accommodation in the regions people drive to. The difference between Seznam and Google is its own piece. For a penzion it comes down to one practical thing: the Czech version of the site must not be a translation of the English, and the property's details must match on Mapy.cz exactly as they do in Google Business. Booking does nothing for you on Seznam. That is the website's job.
What the website has to do
A website that earns its keep is not a brochure. It is the place where a guest who has already found you can, in a minute on a phone, learn what you are, where you are and from how much, pick a room, and check a date. Four things decide it.
The first screen says the place in a sentence, shows the from-price and offers one action: check availability. Not a slogan, not a video.
Rooms as cards: sleeps how many, how big, two things that make it different, from-price, button. On one screen, not four subpages.
A book path that does not lead into another building. The booking engine you have can stay; the pages in front of it must hand over dates and room in one tap, and the engine has to look like your site.
Four languages on their own URLs. For Prague: Czech, English, German, Slovak. For Šumava or the Krkonoše: more likely Czech, German, Polish, English. Which four is decided by your guest book, not by habit.
We built the whole thing as a live sample. Kovovna is an invented hotel in a former metal workshop in Holešovice: three rooms, a restaurant, a terrace, an availability form with no payment, four languages, labelled as a sample throughout. The case study walks through every decision on the pages. The hotel website teardown then shows the six places where a typical Czech hotel site loses the guest.
So: both, with a division of labour
Booking is for the guest who does not know you. The German searching "Pension Riesengebirge", the low season, the new market. For that guest the commission is a fair price for reach.
Your own website is for the guest who does. The one who searched your name, stayed last year, was recommended. And since December 2024 Booking can no longer require you to hold its price on your own site; what the end of parity clauses means for your website is the third piece in this set. On your own site you can be cheaper, or the same price with breakfast included. It just has to be visible.
What we sell, and where we stop
We are Northbound Studio, a small studio in Prague, led by Martina Prethero. For independent hotels, penziony, agriturismi and holiday rentals we design and build the pages guests use to compare rooms and book direct. The Website Review, from €490 excluding VAT, is the first step: we look at the first screen, rooms and book path on a phone and send a short video with a rebuild range. From there: a landing page for one offer, a room-page set, a rebuild of the homepage and book path, or a new official site in about four weeks. We work in Czech and English. We do not run your Booking account and we do not replace your booking engine unless you ask.
If you want to know where your site stands
Send the current website URL and the town. That is enough to start.