The website of a holiday rental, a hotel or a B&B

A traveler who lands on the website of a holiday rental or a hotel has often already seen it elsewhere: on a platform, on a map, in a Google profile. They come to check that the place exists, that it looks like the photos, and to find a direct contact. They compare, they already imagine their stay, and they are wary of anything that looks too good.

What the guest comes looking for

1. The photos of the rooms, the bathroom, the outside: the real place, in daylight.
2. The prices, per night and per season, with what is included: breakfast, linen, cleaning, tourist tax.
3. Availability, and a button that leads to booking.
4. Access: the address, the nearest station, parking, check-in time.
5. The house rules: pets, children, accessibility, cancellation.
6. Reviews from other travelers.

The “Lodging” layout

The studio offers it to campsites, holiday rentals and hotels: the place tells its story through the moments of the day, from morning coffee to the evening terrace.

• The pill navigation floats above the video, detached from the edges: light, it lets the landscape fill the screen.
• The bottom-left hero sets the name of the place and a sentence at the bottom left. Its button leads to your booking tool.
• The statement says in one sentence, large, what is unique about the place: the river at the end of the meadow, the market breakfast, the silence.
• The mosaic gallery arranges five or nine images of different sizes: the room, the view, the table, a detail of the house.
• The prices in rows run through the rates season by season or room by room. In columns, three prices would suggest three packages.
• The accordion answers the questions that keep coming back: check-in time, pets, cancellation, tourist tax. Each one opens with a gesture.
• The testimonials strip scrolls through reviews when there are many.
• The contact brings together the address, the phone and the email as real links.
• The footer says who you are, and carries the legal notice.

The background is a sequence: it changes scene as you scroll, morning, then day, then evening. Each scene is a separate shoot, whose price shows before launching, and the library warns that the visitor barely notices the change: two or three scenes are enough. The light leak lets a warm flow in through a corner of the image, as on film stock. It suits warm places, wood, stone, sunset; on a cold blue palette, it clashes. These scenes are created by a model from your description, and don’t show your house: the gallery shows the real place.

What the rules say

A furnished rental’s registration number

Today in France, registering a furnished tourist rental is only mandatory in certain towns, in so-called high-pressure areas. This is changing: a national online service, scheduled to go live in the fourth quarter of 2026, will make registration mandatory in all towns, and the process will no longer go through the town hall. Numbers already issued by towns will remain valid for a few months, then become invalid (service-public.fr, 2026; Directorate General for Enterprise, 2026).

This number must appear on the rental listing, and platforms must remove listings that don’t carry it where it is required. The safest course is to treat your site as one more listing: the number appears there, near the prices, and you replace it the day the new one arrives.

Bed and breakfasts, for their part, are declared at the town hall before starting, outside this online service (Directorate General for Enterprise, 2025 and 2026).

Ratings and stars

A hotel’s rating is voluntary. The operator requests it from Atout France, after a visit from an accredited inspection body, and it is renewed every five years; a rated hotel displays its plaque, visible from the street (service-public.fr, 2025). For a furnished rental, the rating is optional too, from one to five stars, for five years.

Bed and breakfasts have no official rating, only private labels (Directorate General for Enterprise, 2025). So never write “three stars” for a B&B: name the label. And on any site, only show stars that are currently valid, with the year of the rating.

The tourist tax

The town, or the group of towns, decides whether the tax applies and sets its rate by category of accommodation, within a national range. For a B&B, in 2026, this rate runs from €0.20 to €0.80 per person per night, excluding additional taxes such as the Île-de-France one. When it is collected on actual stays, it appears on the bill separately from the services (Bercy infos, 2026). Each town’s rate can be found on the official simulator.

On the site, say whether your prices include it or not. A traveler accepts an announced tax; they don’t like discovering it on arrival. B&Bs also display their prices on site: outside, at reception and in each room.

The “Book” button

The studio takes no bookings and collects nothing. The hero button leads to the tool you already use: your booking engine, your online calendar, your listing on a platform, or your phone. Choose the channel you prefer people to use, and put it everywhere, in the navigation as in the hero.

Check that the site’s prices are the ones people find when booking. A gap, even of one euro, casts doubt on everything else. For other requests, groups or long stays, the contact block gives your number and your email address, as links that open with a tap.

The mistakes that drive travelers away

• Photos retouched to the point that the room can’t be recognized on arrival. See our tips for your site’s photos.
• A “from” price that only applies on a Tuesday in November.
• The tourist tax or cleaning fee discovered at the last minute.
• Expired stars, or stars for a B&B.
• A missing registration number, or the old town-issued number kept after it has expired.
• Check-in times nowhere to be found, forcing a call the day before departure.