Wix Website Builder: Complete guide for your hotel

What is the Wix website builder?

The Wix website builder is one of several platforms for building a business website, including for hotels. It boasts a user-friendly interface, template designs, and the ability to arrange website elements through a simple drag-and-drop interface, including text, images, videos and forms.

For many businesses, Wix is a popular choice for building a website. However, does this popularity mean that it should also appeal to hoteliers? Let’s explore what Wix has to offer your business, and whether it’s the right choice for you.

Is Wix a good website builder for hotels?

Pros and cons of Wix as a hotel website builder

Pros:

• Simple interface: Wix provides a user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop functionality, making it accessible to users without technical expertise. It allows users to easily create and customise their websites with a visual approach.
• Design templates: Wix offers a vast selection of professionally designed templates across various industries, including specific templates tailored for hotels. These templates provide a starting point for customisation and help users create visually appealing websites.
• Customisation options: Wix allows users to customise their websites to a certain extent, including layouts, colours, fonts, and content. It provides some flexibility to create an online presence that aligns with the brand identity of the hotel.
• App market and integrations: Wix has an App Market that offers third-party integrations and add-ons. Users can enhance their websites with features such as online booking systems, event calendars, contact forms, social media integrations, and more – though this does sometimes rely on parties outside of Wix and extra costs.
• Mobile optimisation: Wix is reportedly optimised for websites on mobile devices, ensuring they are mobile-friendly and responsive. Mobile responsiveness is crucial in today’s mobile-driven world, as it improves the user experience and helps with search engine rankings.

Cons:

• Template limitations: While Wix offers a wide range of templates, customisation options may be limited within each template. Hoteliers will face design constraints or find it challenging to achieve a highly unique or customised look for their website.
• Poor scalability: Wix is suitable for small to medium-sized websites, but it may not be the most scalable solution for large or complex hotel websites with advanced functionality. Users may encounter limitations as their website grows or requires more sophisticated features. This can extend to poor performance when dealing with high numbers of visitors as well, turning what should be a blessing into a hurdle.
• Code access: Wix does not provide direct access to the website’s underlying code. This means that users cannot customise or modify the website’s code directly, which may restrict advanced customisation options or limit integration possibilities with certain external services.
• Monthly subscription: While Wix offers a free plan, many advanced features and functionalities require a premium subscription. Users may need to pay a monthly fee to access specific features or remove Wix advertisements from their website.
• SEO limitations: While Wix provides basic SEO tools and guidance, some users may find it limited compared to other website builders or custom-coded websites. Advanced SEO techniques or fine-grained control over certain aspects may not be as easily achievable with Wix.

How to use the Wix website builder

The Wix website builder tutorial is straightforward, and is similar to many other website builders, including WordPress and Squarespace. The basic steps are:

1. Sign up: Visit the Wix website and click on the “Get Started” button. Enter your email address and create a password to sign up for a Wix account.

2. Choose a template: Browse through the collection of professionally designed templates. Select a template that best suits your website’s purpose or industry. You can preview and explore different templates before making your choice.

3. Customise your site: Once you’ve chosen a template, enter the Wix Editor. Here, you can customise the design and layout of your website. Use the drag-and-drop functionality to add and arrange elements like text boxes, images, videos, and contact forms. Edit and personalise the content to match your brand or individual style.

4. Add pages: Create additional pages for your website by clicking on the “Pages” menu. You can add pages such as Home, About, Services, Blog, and Contact. Rearrange the page order as needed.

5. Customise settings: Access the “Settings” menu to personalise your website further. Update your site’s title, description, and SEO settings to optimise its visibility on search engines. Set your preferred domain name or connect an existing domain.

6. Add functionality: Enhance your website’s functionality by incorporating Wix apps. Explore the Wix App Market to find apps for contact forms, social media integration, e-commerce features, booking systems, and more. Install and configure the desired apps to extend your site’s capabilities.

7. Preview and publish: Before publishing your website, preview it using the “Preview” button to ensure everything looks as expected. Once you’re satisfied, click on the “Publish” button to make your website live on the internet.

8. Update and maintain: Remember to regularly update and maintain your website. Use the Wix Editor to make changes, add new content, or modify your design whenever necessary.

Learning how to use the Wix website builder is intentionally standardised, but there are some factors that make the Wix experience different from others – particularly for hoteliers.

For example, the Wix platform builder does have some features designed for hoteliers, but it requires an additional app (Wix Hotels) to use. In addition, the templates provided by Wix have some hotel-specific designs, but they are the exception, not the rule. In fact, of the 900+ templates offered by Wix, only 4 are specific to hotels, at the time of writing.

This means there are fewer templates suitable for hotels, which can result in you having to use the same template as another hotel – maybe even one of your competitors. You can’t buy a template for exclusive use either. Coupled with Wix’s limitations around in-depth customisation, and you may end up with a site that looks generic.

Compare this to SiteMinder, which provides high quality and top performing website templates, all designed exclusively for hotels, with features like direct booking as standard without the need for additional apps. This makes our website design process fast, easy, and tailored, and perhaps most importantly, results in a truly unique site that will help your hotel stand out from the crowd.

Wix website builder review: Are users happy?

Is Wix a good website builder? Check out these reviews below from real users that talk to both the pros and cons of Wix.

• “I used to direct clients to purchase Wix plans that I would build their sites on. I had a positive association with Wix when I started but realised the limitations on designing the more I used Wix. When clients want extra functionality on their site, they seem disappointed when I have to tell them they have to upgrade their plan in order to do that feature. I don’t recommend using Wix anymore.”
• “Wix is great for first-time website designers and people who don’t want to spend much time putting up their website. The cons are that it does look less nice than websites made on other platforms, there are fewer features you can customise to your website, and their customer service is subpar.”
• “For a fast simple easy website, Wix is a great option. If you are looking to customise, create your own theme or move your website to another host, then Wix is not for you.”

Wix website builder cost: Worth it?

Wix has several different tiers for the Wix website builder pricing. They are:

• Basic: $17/month
• Unlimited: $26/month
• VIP: $35/month

The higher the tier, the more features and capacity your Wix website would have. Basic and Unlimited plans, for example, can’t receive customised reports about website performance. They also have far less storage space than the VIP option – and only the VIP option allows you unlimited video hours. Ironically, the ‘Unlimited’ plan video hours are capped at 10 hours, and storage space is capped at only 35 GB.

It’s important to note that these prices, particularly the cheaper tiers, lack some critical functionality for hotel websites. For example, if you want to access the Wix Hotels Channel Manager, you must pay an extra $15 a month as well as install the additional Wix Hotels app. This is in stark contrast to a website builder like SiteMinder, where what Wix calls “advanced features” are included all in the same price.

Lastly, there are cheaper tiers in the basic Website Plans, but these are significantly limited, especially around being able to accept payments. These are more suitable for personal and professional websites for individuals, rather than hotels. 

If you’re concerned about how much a Wix website builder experience is, there is also a free Wix website builder option, but this is the most limited choice of all, and requires that you retain Wix branding, even in the URL (e.g. hotelname.wixsite.com).

Unlike SiteMinder’s 30-day opportunity to try out the software, Wix doesn’t offer a “free trial”. Instead, you can upgrade to a premium plan and, if you want a refund, you must cancel within 14 days. Not a free trial, but the next best thing (with the need to manually cancel).

Is Wix a good website builder? For many businesses, it is. But is Wix the best website builder for hotels, considering the cost compared to other providers? There may be better options out there.

Create a professional hotel website with SiteMinder and attract more direct bookings online

With SiteMinder, you gain access to everything you need to thrive in the hotel and accommodation world. Our hotel website builder is designed exclusively for medium to large sized hotel businesses, combining high performance, an easy-to-use interface, dedicated hotel designs with full customisable, and built-in integration with the broader SiteMinder tool set (including our world-class booking engine).

Signing on with the SiteMinder website building experience means you can enjoy:

• More profitable direct booking experience. We get you everything you need to bypass OTAs and generate a loyal customer base that returns to you year-after-year. This includes a free website domain bundled with our builder and absolutely no “extra fees” for channel management and embedded booking.
• Better results from search engines. Google Hotel Ads, Trivago, TripAdvisor – these are all platforms that SiteMinder can help you rank better on through our channel management service. Meanwhile, our highly optimised website builder will help you appear in the top results on search engines too. The best of both worlds.

• Faster bookings, more returning guests. The SiteMinder website builder uses best-in-class templates and design to create a fully customisable, highly professional website. We even include the option of including a TripAdvisor feedback form directly on your site to rapidly earn positive guest feedback and better leverage the experience of your guests.

Whether you’re managing a single hotel, a group of hotels, or an international hotel chain, SiteMinder gives you a single place to manage every aspect of your enterprise – real time insights, bookings, distribution of listing, guest management, payments, and much more. Start a free trial today or watch a demo below.