Managing your website without a marketing team: how to do it with Horecaflix

You don't have a marketer on staff, but your website still has to be right. Featured in Horecaflix: you manage your website and online presence yourself, without a marketing agency or technical skills, keeping opening hours, menus and promotions current across every location.

Key takeaways

• 70 to 80% of guests check your website before they book or visit, so an outdated site costs you visible revenue (Dutch research, HappyChef).
• Lack of time, cost, and lack of technical knowledge are the biggest barriers for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) trying to keep their online presence current (Dutch research, MKB Servicedesk).
• With Horecaflix, you manage your website, opening hours, menus and promotions yourself, with no marketer, developer or agency standing between you and publishing.
• With multiple locations, the same tools keep things consistent: every location shows the right hours, the right menu and the right promotion.
• Managing it yourself doesn't replace a marketing strategy, but it does remove the delay of routing every change through an outside agency.

Why an accurate website is no longer optional, even for small hospitality businesses

Most guests check your website before they book a table or walk in. Research shows that 70 to 80% of guests check a hospitality business's website before booking, and that 38% leave as soon as a site looks unattractive or outdated (Dutch research, HappyChef). A wrong closing time, a menu that's three months out of date, or a promotion that ended weeks ago: these are small details, but they decide whether a guest clicks through to a competitor or actually books.

For an operator with a single location, that's already frustrating. With multiple locations, the risk compounds: every location has its own hours, sometimes its own menu variant, and its own local promotions. One outdated detail on one location page is just as jarring to a guest as an outdated website overall.

The problem: no marketer, but a site that still has to be right

Many smaller hospitality businesses simply don't have a marketer on staff, and that's not the exception. Research by YouGov, commissioned by STRATO, among Dutch SMEs shows that lack of time (41%), cost (38%) and lack of technical knowledge (30%) are the biggest barriers to keeping an online presence current (Dutch research, MKB Servicedesk). At the same time, four in ten SMEs plan to invest more in their online presence this year, despite those barriers (Dutch research, MKB Servicedesk).

That tension is exactly where hospitality operators tend to get stuck. Hiring an agency for every small change is expensive and slow: a changed closing time around a holiday, a new seasonal promotion or an updated menu first has to be relayed, scheduled and published by someone else. By the time the change goes live, the holiday is sometimes already over.

What Horecaflix handles: managing your website and online presence yourself

Horecaflix is built to decouple managing your website and online presence from having a marketer. You manage your own content: copy, opening hours, menus and promotions, with no developer or outside agency needing to sit between you and the update. What used to be a request to an agency becomes a change you make yourself.

That doesn't mean you build everything from scratch. The foundation (the design, the structure, the technical setup) is already there, and you fill in the content that changes regularly. Exactly the kind of content that would normally require a marketer, but without needing to hire or contract one.

Updating it yourself, no developer needed: hours, menus, promotions

Making a change in Horecaflix doesn't take a separate request to an agency or a wait until someone else has time. You update the opening hours, the menu item or the promotion yourself, and the change goes live as soon as you save it.

Take an operator who launches a terrace promotion as soon as the weather turns. She used to text the agency the copy and the date, then wait for the agency to find time to publish it, sometimes not for a few days, even though the promotion mattered for the coming weekend. With Horecaflix, she puts the promotion on the site herself as soon as the forecast turns, usually within minutes instead of days.

The same goes for the smaller, recurring changes: an adjusted closing time around a holiday, a new dish on the menu, a temporarily changed menu price. These are exactly the updates that tend to get skipped now because they feel "too small" to involve an agency for, and that's how a website quietly goes stale without anyone deciding it should.

Keeping things consistent across multiple locations

At a single location, an outdated detail is already annoying. With multiple locations, the risk of locations drifting apart becomes a structural problem: one location shows the new menu, another still shows the old one, and a guest comparing both websites notices the difference immediately.

Horecaflix is set up to guard that consistency. You work from the same environment for all your locations, so a change that applies everywhere (a new seasonal menu, an updated brand-voice line) goes out in one pass, instead of location by location. Changes that only apply to one location, like a local promotion or a temporary closure for maintenance, you target without touching the rest.

That way you avoid the situation where a guest sees a promotion on one location's website, calls the wrong location, and is told the promotion doesn't apply there.

What this gets you: time savings, cost savings and control

In practice, managing it yourself delivers three things. First, time: a change that used to take days through an agency now goes live within minutes. Second, cost: you're not paying for every small text change or price update separately, which adds up fast with frequent changes like menus, promotions and hours. Third, control: you're not dependent on an outside agency's availability to fix a mistake or get a promotion live on time.

There's also a less obvious benefit: less friction around the middle step. When you manage the content yourself, you no longer have to explain to an agency exactly what needs to change and then check whether it was done correctly. You make the change, check it yourself, and you're done.

Getting started with your Horecaflix website

Managing your own website doesn't mean rewriting all your content at once. Most operators start with the kind of update that currently lags most often: opening hours that are no longer accurate, a menu with outdated prices, or a promotion that's still live long after it ended.

From there, you expand to the content you change regularly, like seasonal promotions or location-specific updates. You don't need to hire a marketer or bring in an agency for every change along the way.

Not sure how to get started managing your own Horecaflix website? Get in touch with Horecaflix, and we'll help you figure out how to set it up for your business.