In Crete, the season may start in April or May, but the decisions start much earlier. Many guests plan and book their summer holidays between January and March. If your website still shows last year’s prices, a broken booking form or photos from 2019 when they visit, they move on.

Set aside a morning in the winter and go through this checklist. Most items take a few minutes. Together, they make the difference between a site that brings bookings and one that quietly loses them.

1. Prices, dates and availability

  • Update prices for the new season, including high-season and low-season rates.
  • Check your opening and closing dates, and say them clearly: “Open from 1 April to 31 October”.
  • Make sure the availability calendar is in sync with the booking platforms you use, so you don’t get double bookings.
  • Update offers and packages. Remove last year’s early-booking offer if it has ended, or create this year’s.

2. Photos and content

  • Replace photos of anything that has changed: renovated rooms, a new pool, a new menu or terrace.
  • Add a few recent photos. Guests notice when every picture looks a decade old.
  • Read your main pages again. Remove services you no longer offer and add the ones you do.
  • Restaurants: publish your menu as a normal web page, not only as a PDF or a photo. It loads faster on phones, it can be translated, and Google can read it.

3. Test the booking or enquiry flow, as a guest would

This is the most important step, and the one most often skipped.

  • Make a test booking from your phone, on mobile data, from the home page to the confirmation.
  • If you take payments online, test that the payment works and that you receive the money (then refund it).
  • Check that the confirmation email arrives, looks right and does not land in spam, both for you and for the guest.
  • Send a message through every contact form and check you receive it.
  • Tap your phone number and WhatsApp link on a phone: they should start a call or chat directly.

4. Google Business Profile

For many guests, your Google listing is the first thing they see, before your website.

  • Set your seasonal hours, and add special hours for opening day and holidays like Easter.
  • If you close in winter, avoid marking the business as permanently closed. Use the hours and a post to say when you reopen.
  • Upload new photos and check that the website link and phone number are correct.
  • Reply to recent reviews, positive and negative.

Our guide on setting up your Google Business Profile covers every setting in detail.

5. Speed and mobile

  • Test your home page and booking page on PageSpeed Insights.
  • Open your site on a phone and scroll through it as a guest. Is the booking button easy to find? Is the text easy to read without zooming?

If your site feels slow, read why a slow website costs you bookings for the most common causes and fixes.

6. Security, updates and renewals

A website problem in July is much harder to fix than one in February.

  • Check the renewal dates of your domain and hosting, and turn on auto-renewal. An expired domain takes your site and your email offline.
  • Make sure your SSL certificate is valid (the padlock in the browser) and renews automatically.
  • Update your CMS, theme and plugins, after taking a backup.
  • Check that backups run automatically and that you know how to restore one.
  • Remove admin accounts for people who no longer work with you.

If you use WordPress, our guide on what to do when WordPress gets hacked also explains how to prevent it.

7. Google Search Console and analytics

  • Open Google Search Console and check for errors: pages not indexed, security issues, mobile problems.
  • Check that analytics still records visits, and that booking or enquiry tracking works, so you can see what your marketing brings in.

8. Every language

If your site is multilingual, repeat the checks above in every language. Prices, dates and offers are often updated in one language and forgotten in the others. Read more in our guide to multilingual websites for tourism businesses.

  • Update your privacy policy if you added new tools, such as a booking engine, chat or analytics.
  • Check that the cookie banner works and lets visitors refuse non-essential cookies.
  • Make sure your business details are correct: company name, address, tax number and licence number (for example, your MHTE or AMA registration number for accommodation in Greece).

Run out of time?

If this list feels like too much before the season, we can do it for you. We look after websites and booking systems for tourism businesses in Crete and across Greece and Cyprus. Contact us in good time, before the first guests start planning.