The pre-season website checklist: what every site needs before opening day
Technical checks every hospitality site needs completed before the first charter flight lands.
Opening day on Mykonos does not move. When the first flights arrive in spring, your team already has countless moving parts to manage: staffing, stocking, physical maintenance, and welcoming guests. The very last thing you need is to discover that a booking button is throwing errors or your online menu is showing outdated prices.
Across ten seasons and over 500 client sites built and maintained on the island, this is the practical checklist every hotel, villa, and restaurant should run through before welcoming their first guest:
1. Real-world mobile speed
Never test your website solely on office fiber. Open it on a smartphone over a mobile connection. The vast majority of your seasonal visitors arrive on mobile, often while travelling. If room photography takes too long to appear, the user has already tapped back.
2. Live digital menus (no PDF downloads)
For restaurants and beach venues, PDF menus are the fastest way to lose guests: they require pinch-to-zoom on small screens, consume bandwidth, and are invisible to search engines. Menus must be clean, responsive web pages, updated with current seasonal pricing, and synced with your in-venue QR codes.
3. A test booking with a real card
Never assume your booking engine works just because it worked at the end of last season. Run an actual reservation using a real payment card: verify that the merchant gateway settles properly, that the confirmation email lands in your inbox without spam flags, and that front desk inventory updates.
4. Google Business Profile & Maps verification
Check your opening hours, phone number, website link, and exact map pin. During peak season, visitors from around the world find your location directly through Google Maps. An outdated phone number or wrong pin causes immediate friction.
5. SSL certificates and domain renewals
Every summer we see websites go offline mid-season because a domain registration expired or an SSL certificate failed to renew. Ensure all domains, DNS records, and security certificates are set to auto-renew with an active card on file.
6. Contact forms and WhatsApp links
Send a test inquiry through your website's contact form. Does it reach the front desk inbox, or does it vanish into junk folders? If you have a WhatsApp click-to-chat button, verify it connects to this season's team rather than a former employee's phone.
A website tested calmly in spring will never let you down in August.
If you would like our team to review your website's technical readiness before opening day, reach out to our studio or write to info@webee.gr.