How much does a DMO website cost?

What public records show

Tourism offices are often funded with public money, so their contracts are often public. One example:

• A city tourism office's 2023 sole-source request estimated $287,200 over four years (about $72,000 a year) to keep its website on a specialized tourism platform.
• The same request said the office's content system was proprietary "because it is owned by" the vendor, and that staying on it was needed to keep managing the site.

That second point matters as much as the price. When the vendor owns the system your site runs on, leaving means rebuilding.

The lines on the bill

One large tourism platform publishes a price list for UK government buyers. For a small destination, its yearly lines include:

• Website license: £3,412 a year.
• Support for the people who edit the site: £2,632 a year, as its own line.
• Hosting by traffic: £396 a year at the lowest level, rising with bandwidth.
• Business listings: £460 a year per staff user, plus listings hosting.
• Extras, each priced on its own: a form for businesses to submit listings, reports, an email tool with per-email credits, data imports from £487 each.

Then the one-time costs:

• Design: a standard design package from £7,702.50; a custom build from £34,060.
• Content migration: a setup fee plus a charge per page.
• Training: £1,462 per session.

Those are UK prices in pounds, but the shape is common: a small license, and many separate lines around it.

Content costs extra, too

Trip ideas, itineraries and "things to do" pages are what visitors read. If your vendor or agency writes them, they're usually priced per piece. Ask what an article costs, and whether updating an old one counts as a new one.

Questions to ask before you sign

• What's the total cost per year, every line, for each year of the contract?
• Is support for our staff included, or billed separately?
• What does each extra cost: event submissions, partner listings, reports, email, imports?
• How is hosting priced? What happens if our traffic grows?
• What's the build fee? What's included in it?
• How long is the term? What does it cost to leave early?
• Who owns the site's design and content? Can we take it with us?
• Can we export every listing, event and page in plain files?
• Does the site meet WCAG 2.1 AA? Will you put that in the contract?
• Will you provide an insurance certificate and a W-9, and sign our standard contract terms?

For side-by-side numbers on named platforms, see our compare pages.