Websites for Hotels, Havelis and Homestays in India

The search after the search

Consider a couple in Bengaluru planning four nights in Jaisalmer. They find a small haveli on a booking platform, like the photographs and copy its name. Then they do what many careful travellers do before paying: they search the name on Google. What they find in the next minute decides whether they book through the platform, book with you directly, or move on.

If they find a Google profile with recent photos, a website with the rooms, the tariff, the courtyard where breakfast is served and a WhatsApp button, they message you with a question about airport pickup. If they find nothing but the platform listing, they book there or not at all.

The couple is an illustration, not a guest of anyone we know. The pattern is the point: platforms are where many guests find a small property, and your own website is where they check that it is real, ask a question and come back next season. A platform can sell a night. It cannot tell a guest why your courtyard is worth the drive.

What only your own website can do

• Show the place as it is: every room, its size, bed, bath and view, with your own photographs, and the parts of the property that are the reason to stay.
• Carry your direct contact: WhatsApp, phone and email, in a form a guest can tap.
• Keep the guest: someone who stayed last winter will search your name, not a platform, when they plan the next trip.
• Hold the facts a guest asks about: tariff and what it includes, check-in times, house rules, pickup, parking, food, and your registration.

Google’s free booking links

Google lets a hotel’s own booking site appear in its hotel results at no cost. These free booking links show the site’s name and the room rate and send the guest straight to book. They are not paid placements, and Google says no one can pay for a higher position; ranking uses things like value to the user, landing page experience and how accurate the price has been. The “Official site” badge goes to hotel owners and their booking systems, never to booking platforms.

To appear, a property needs three things, in this order:

1. A verified Google Business Profile. On its own, this shows you on Maps and Search, but without prices.
2. A Hotel Center account with rates and availability.
3. A way to send those rates. Google currently says that direct integration is unavailable due to high demand, so prices must come through a connectivity partner: a central reservation system, booking engine, channel manager or property management system. If you already use one, it may already be connected.

Two practical rules from Google’s best practices: the price you send must change whenever the price on your website changes, and the booking link should land on the page for the room and rate the guest picked, not your home page.

The Google profile: right category, honest reviews

Hotels are eligible for a Business Profile because guests come to them in person. Google’s eligibility rules exclude rental properties such as vacation homes, so a self-catered house with no host on site is a different case. Google treats a property as a hotel only if it takes overnight guests and has a front desk and an owner or manager on site, and it has a bed and breakfast (guest house) category for small properties where the owner or manager is present. That is the right one for most homestays.

On a verified hotel profile you can edit amenities, but not opening hours, because Google treats hotels as open around the clock. The prices shown on the profile come from hotel ads and free booking links, not from the profile itself. The website field must point to your own site; Google’s guidelines do not allow links that redirect elsewhere, including social pages.

Reviews follow Maps policy: you may ask any guest for an honest review, but you may not offer a discount, a free night or anything else in return, and you may not ask only the guests you expect to be happy.

What structured data can and cannot do

Google Search has no hotel-specific rich result. Hotel markup belongs to the general local business type, where Google asks you to use the most specific subtype. It helps Google read your name, address and contact details; it will not add stars. Google does not give star ratings for reviews a business shows about itself, including an embedded Google reviews widget. Hotel price markup exists, but it is a Google Hotels feature for checking your website’s prices against your price feed, not a search result.

Registration and the rules a guest may ask about

Rajasthan homestays and heritage properties

Rajasthan replaced its homestay rules in 2026. Under the Rajasthan Homestay (Paying Guest House) Scheme, 2026, a home can register 1 to 8 rooms with up to 24 beds; the 2021 scheme allowed 1 to 5 rooms. You apply at the district tourism office. A temporary registration, valid for six months, is issued within seven working days of a complete application, and you may start operating with it. After an inspection, the permanent certificate is valid for two years. You must display the certificate and your tariff, and send the previous month’s guest statistics to the tourism office by the 5th of each month.

Heritage hotels need a Certificate of Heritage. The building must date from before 1 January 1950, and new construction may not exceed half of the total built-up area. If you have the certificate, say so on the website; it is a reason to choose you.

NIDHI+ and central classification

NIDHI, the Ministry of Tourism’s national database, is where accommodation units register and apply for classification. It defines a homestay as rooms in a resident-occupied home rented with meals, and a heritage hotel as a palace, fort, haveli or residence built before 1950. It is not a booking platform. The central Incredible India homestay classification, graded Gold or Silver, is voluntary, carries no financial assistance, and is applied only in states without their own scheme; Rajasthan has one.

Foreign guests: Form III within 24 hours

The keeper of any accommodation must report a foreign guest online within 24 hours of arrival, and again within 24 hours of departure. The form, long known as Form C, is now Form III under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, in force since 1 September 2025. The rules name homestays, paying guest houses, hostels and dharamshala-type premises, require guest records to be kept electronically for at least a year, and OCI cardholders are now included. Mention on your website that foreign guests should bring their passport and visa details at check-in; it saves an awkward conversation at the desk.

GST on your tariff

From 22 September 2025, hotel accommodation valued at ₹7,500 or less per unit per day moved from 12% to 5% GST. The 5% rate is mandatory and comes without input tax credit; a hotel cannot choose 18% with credit for those rooms. Rooms above ₹7,500 stay at 18%. There is no zero slab for cheap rooms; the old exemption for rooms up to ₹1,000 ended in July 2022.

On the website, show whether each tariff includes GST, and keep it consistent with what your booking engine and the platforms show. A guest who sees ₹4,000 on your site and ₹4,200 at checkout will remember the ₹200, not the courtyard.

Who is travelling

India recorded 9.95 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2024, and Rajasthan was among the top five states for foreign tourist visits that year. Domestic tourist visits in 2024 were about 294.8 crore. Domestic visits outnumber foreign arrivals by a wide margin, so write for Indian travellers first: rooms, food, parking, distances and the questions a family asks before a long drive.

A page-by-page checklist

What Dwize builds for a hotel or homestay

Dwize Site is ₹49,900 a year, GST inclusive: up to nine pages in English and one Indian language, with analytics, Search Console and the Google Business Profile foundation set up, and twelve content updates through the year, each live within two business days. That covers a new season’s tariff, a new room or a festival package without a developer queue. It turns visitors into WhatsApp and call enquiries.

Dwize Site is not a booking engine or a channel manager, and it does not connect to Google Hotel Center by itself. If you already use a booking engine, the site sends guests to it, and the free booking links are set up through that provider. A full online booking-and-payment flow is a Dwize Suite project, scoped in writing.

See Dwize for tourism and hospitality, or the district pages for Jaisalmer and Udaipur.