There is no single price for a travel-trade website — but there is an honest way to think about it. The cost is driven by complexity, not by a per-page rate. A clean brochure site for a representation company sits at one end; a tour-operator platform with itinerary tools, trade logins and integrations sits at the other. Here is what actually moves the number.

What actually drives the cost

Most quotes for a travel-trade project come down to five things:

  • Scope and depth. A five-page brochure site is a different brief from a sector platform with dozens of product pages, filtering and structured data.
  • Content readiness. If imagery, copy and product data exist and are organised, the build moves faster. If they need creating or untangling, that is real work.
  • Trade features. Agent logins, partner portals, rate or availability feeds, downloadable kits, multi-currency and multi-language all add genuine engineering.
  • Integrations. Connecting to a reservation system, CRM, payment provider or third-party feed is where simple projects become involved ones.
  • Ongoing care. Hosting, security, backups and updates are a monthly commitment, not a one-off — and worth budgeting for from the start.

Three shapes of project

It helps to picture where you sit, because the shape matters more than the page count:

  • A brochure or representation site. A sharp, fast, trade-credible presence — who you are, what you represent, how partners reach you. The most common starting point for rep companies, PR teams and associations.
  • A sector site with depth. A tour operator, DMC or lodge group presenting structured product — itineraries, properties, destinations — that has to read well to both the trade and the consumer.
  • A trade platform. Logins, portals, downloadable resources, feeds and tools your partners use to do business with you. This is bespoke software, and it is priced as such.

What to watch for

The cheapest and most expensive options both carry risk:

  • Template marketplaces look cheap until you need anything specific to the trade — then you are paying to fight the template.
  • Offshore booking-engine vendors sell commodity portals built around a fixed product. They can be cost-effective, but you inherit their template and their roadmap, not your own brand.
  • Generalist agencies can build beautifully, but you will spend part of your budget explaining how the travel trade works before any code is written. (We wrote more on that in specialist vs general agency.)

How we price it

Charnette scopes and prices every project individually, after a short discovery conversation — there is no fixed package, because no two operators sell the same way. We work in GBP, USD or ZAR depending on your business, and we are clear about what is in scope before anything starts. We also host and maintain what we build, so launch and handover are one continuous relationship rather than a cliff edge.

The bottom line

Budget for the job, not the page count. Be honest with any partner about your trade features and integrations up front — that is where surprises live. And weigh the monthly care alongside the build: a website that is fast, secure and quietly looked after earns its keep for years, while a cheap one that drifts out of date costs more in lost direct business than it ever saved.

If you would like a straight answer for your specific operation, tell us what you are building and we will scope it properly.