Free website check-up

The Railway Inn MK

Your guests love the place. Right now your website isn't turning that into direct bookings. Here's what we found, what it could look like, and what I'd do about it.

Prepared for Dan by Max Mallender · checked 25 to 27 September 2026 · all findings are snapshots from those dates, with the evidence linked at the bottom
The short version

Brilliant reviews, leaky website

The business is in great shape. The website is the weak link, and it's sending guests (and margin) to Airbnb and Booking.com.

5.0

Guests rate you brilliantly

5.0 from 55 Google reviews, 9.7 on Booking.com. Trust isn't the problem.

0

Dates we could book on your site

When we tested, the booking calendar opened on October 2027 with every date marked "Booked". Worth checking yourself today.

0

Local searches you rank for

About 2,000 Google searches a month in MK are for the kind of stay you offer. Ranking data doesn't show your site in the top 100 for any of them.

What it's worth

Where the money is

Estimates built from your published prices. Drag the sliders to your real numbers (your Airbnb and Booking.com dashboards show exactly what you paid in fees last year).

Your prices run £140 to £300 a night.
200 nights is about 55% occupancy.
Airbnb host fees are roughly 3 to 15%, Booking.com and Expedia around 15 to 18%.
Mostly repeat guests and contractors, once direct booking works.
Your site currently promises 10% off for booking direct.
At an average 3-night stay, filling nights that are currently empty. A target, not a forecast.
Booking revenue a year
Paid to booking sites in commission
Net saving from moving guests direct
commission avoided, minus your discount and ~1.5% card fees
Extra booking revenue from search
sales, before cleaning and running costs
Extra money in per year, before running costs

Scorecard

How the site scores today

My scores out of 10, based on the checks below.

What we found

The five big leaks

Each one with the evidence, so you can check it yourself.

Leak 1 · Check this first

We couldn't book a single date on your website

Your homepage says "book directly with us to save 10%", which is exactly the right idea. But when we opened the booking calendar on /accommodation/booking/ on 27 September, it jumped to October 2027, and every date we looked at was marked "Booked". There was no date we could select. The date search on /booking/ just reloaded the same page.

If that's what your guests see too, anyone who wants to book direct either emails you or books on Airbnb instead. The quickest check: open your site on your phone and try to book any date next month. It may well be a small settings issue rather than anything big.

Screenshot of the Railway Inn booking calendar opening on October 2027 with every date greyed out
Your booking calendar as we saw it on 27 Sep 2026.
Leak 2

On a phone, the main photo takes 7 to 13 seconds to appear

We ran Google's own speed test (Lighthouse, simulating a phone on a mobile connection) twice. The main image took 7.4 seconds to appear in the latest run and 13.2 seconds in an earlier one. Google counts under 2.5 seconds as good and over 4 seconds as poor for this measure. Speed is only one of many things Google weighs, but slow pages lose visitors before they see a single photo.

The main causes: the homepage weighs 11MB, with full-size photos of up to 1.6MB each, and the server takes 2 to 3.5 seconds just to respond. Run the test yourself; results vary a little run to run.

7.4s

Main image on mobile (latest run)

2.5s

Google's "good" mark

60

Mobile speed score /100

11MB

Homepage size

Leak 3

About 2,000 local searches a month, and your site isn't ranking for them

We pulled Google search data for Milton Keynes. Around 2,000 searches a month are for the kind of stay you offer. Advertisers pay £1 to £4 a click to appear for them, which gives a feel for what each visitor is worth.

According to Google ranking data, your site isn't in the top 100 for any of them. The only 6 phrases it shows up for are other pubs' names, on page 4 or lower. We also checked the live top 20 for three of these searches: the results are mostly national booking sites and comparison sites (Booking.com, Trivago, Tripadvisor, Expedia), not local owners.

Google UK searchA monthYour site in top 100?
accommodation milton keynes720No
places to stay in milton keynes720No
serviced accommodation milton keynes320No
holiday cottage / holiday let milton keynes180No
hotels in wolverton140No

Source: Google Ads search volumes and Google UK ranking data via DataForSEO, 27 Sep 2026. Results vary by location and device. Full data linked at the bottom.

Leak 4

AI search isn't picking your site up yet

Your homepage describes the house well in plain text: sleeps 8, 3 bedrooms, sauna, jacuzzi bath, garden, pets welcome, and your package prices. That's a good base.

What's missing is the same information in structured data, the tagged, machine-readable format search engines and AI tools use to be sure what a business is, where it is and what it costs. On 25 September we put five guest-style questions (like "sauna stay Milton Keynes" and "group stay sleeps 8 Milton Keynes") to an AI search tool, and your own website wasn't cited in any answer. Where the Railway Inn did come up, it was through your Booking.com listing.

FactIn your page textIn structured data
Business nameYesYes
Whole house, sleeps 8YesNo
Sauna, jacuzzi, pets, gardenYesNo
AddressPartlyNo
PricesYesNo
Review ratingLink onlyNo
Live availabilityNoNo
Leak 5

Your Google Maps listing is great, but unfinished

This is your strongest asset: 5.0 stars from 55 reviews when we checked, claimed, with 43 photos.

It has no business description, though, and we didn't see it in Google's hotel results for "accommodation milton keynes" (720 searches a month). Keep your "Guest house" category as it is: Google's rules don't allow profiles for holiday homes, so don't swap it for a holiday-let category. A proper description and full amenities are the free win here, and they're in the fixes below.

Google Business Profile27 Sep 2026
Rating5.0 (55 reviews)
Claimed, website linkedYes
Photos43
CategoryGuest house (keep it)
Business descriptionNone
In Google's hotel box for "accommodation milton keynes"No
What it could look like

Same house, a website that sells it

A quick mock-up using your own photos and prices. Have a play with the booking bar, it works out the price (weekend high season assumed May to September).

1 · Your homepage, built around booking direct

railwayinnmk.co.uk

A whole Victorian house to yourself, with sauna and jacuzzi. Sleeps 8.

★★★★★ 5.0 on Google (55 reviews) · New Bradwell, Milton Keynes · Pets welcome

2 · How you'd look on Google

sauna house to rent milton keynes
railwayinnmk.co.uk
Private Victorian House with Sauna, Sleeps 8 | Milton Keynes
From £140 per night · Sleeps 8 · Pets welcome
A whole 1866 railway workers' house with a private sauna, jacuzzi bath and garden. 3 bedrooms, sleeps 8. Book direct and save 10%.

Today your Google title starts with "Home -" and the description stops mid-sentence at "Welcome to our beautifully".

3 · How an AI assistant would recommend you

Somewhere near Milton Keynes for 6 of us with a sauna? We're bringing the dog.

The Railway Inn, New Bradwell is a good fit: a whole restored 1866 railway workers' house with a private sauna and a jacuzzi bath, 3 bedrooms sleeping up to 8, and dogs are welcome. railwayinnmk.co.uk

Weekend breaks start around £200 a night, and it has a 5.0 rating from 55 Google reviews. You can book direct on their website.

Illustration, not a guarantee. This is the kind of answer that becomes more likely once your site gives AI tools the facts in structured form.

On the house

Five free fixes for this week

No money needed, all doable in your WordPress dashboard and Google account in about an hour.

  1. ~10 minTest your booking calendar, and give guests a fallbackOn your phone, try to book any date next month. If you can't, point the "Book Now" button at your email or WhatsApp until it's sorted, so nobody who wants to book direct hits a wall and drifts off to Airbnb.
  2. ~20 minFinish your Google Business ProfileKeep "Guest house" as your category. Add a business description that says what you are (whole house, 3 bedrooms, sleeps 8, private sauna and jacuzzi bath, garden, pets welcome, great for contractors and groups), tick every amenity that genuinely applies, and reply to your reviews.
  3. ~10 minFix your Google title and descriptionIn the SureRank SEO settings for the homepage, set the title to something like Private Victorian House with Sauna, Sleeps 8 | Milton Keynes and the description to A whole 1866 railway workers' house with a private sauna, jacuzzi bath and garden. 3 bedrooms, sleeps 8, pets welcome. Book direct and save 10%. Right now Google shows your title as "Home - ..." and cuts the description off at "Welcome to our beautifully".
  4. ~5 minSwap the two menu links"Amenities" currently jumps to the About section and "Reviews" jumps to Amenities. In Appearance → Menus, point Amenities at #amenities and Reviews at your Google reviews.
  5. ongoingAsk every direct guest for a Google reviewA short, friendly message after checkout keeps your 5.0 climbing. Just ask; Google doesn't allow offering discounts or freebies in exchange for reviews.
What I'd do next

The plan, in ranked order

Ranked by how directly each one makes or saves you money. Each stands on its own, so you can start with one and add the rest when it suits.

1

A booking system that actually takes bookings

No need to build this from scratch. I'd use a ready-made holiday-let system. These connect to Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo, so when a booking lands on one, your dates are closed on the others within minutes. That sharply cuts the risk of double-booking. They take card payments and deposits, send confirmation emails, and come with a phone app.

OptionCostWhy
Smoobu Professional
my pick
£30.10 a month, or £27.09 a month paid yearly. No booking commission.Simplest for one house. Channel manager, booking website and payments included. 14-day free trial, no card needed.
Hospitable Professional£43.12 a monthMore automation (AI guest messaging, dynamic pricing). Its cheaper plan doesn't include a booking website or taking payments.

Prices from their websites on 27 September 2026, excluding VAT. Card processing fees are extra with either.

You could set it up yourself. If you'd rather not, I'll do it: connect your listings, load your packages and seasonal prices, set up deposits, put the booking calendar on your website, and test a real booking end to end.

Bonus revenue: on nights the house is empty, we could look at selling sauna and garden sessions by the hour to locals, so the sauna earns even when there's no stay.

Why first: it's what turns your "book direct" promise into real bookings.

£300set-up, one-off
2

Speed, Google and AI search set-up

On your current site: compress and resize the photos, add structured data (the machine-readable facts: whole house, sleeps 8, sauna, jacuzzi, pets, prices, address, reviews), tidy titles and descriptions, and add four focused pages aimed at real searches: contractor stays in MK, group stays, dog-friendly breaks, and stays near MK Bowl and Silverstone events.

Why second: it's how you start competing for those 2,000 monthly searches without paying per click. Rankings take a few months to build and aren't guaranteed, but you can't win them without this.

£600one-off
3

Weekly check-up and changes

An automated check that runs every week: your Google rankings and AI search visibility, site speed, broken links, and a test that the booking calendar is still taking bookings. You get a short plain-English summary of what changed and what we fixed. Small changes you want are included, just message them in.

Why third: it keeps things improving, and catches problems like a dead calendar the week they happen, not months later.

£79a month
4

Optional: a new site, off WordPress, built "agent-first"

Only worth it if you're fed up with WordPress, or if items 1 to 3 don't get the speed where it should be. A fast rebuild around the mock-up above, on Cloudflare hosting (low cost, no plugins to update), built to hit Google's "good" speed mark on phones.

What "agent-first" means: instead of logging into a dashboard, you say what you want in plain English, by message or email: "put the weekend price up to £320 for December", "add the new garden photos", "block out 3 to 5 March". AI agents make the change and I check it before it goes live.

Dynamic pricing: prices that adjust with demand, higher for MK Bowl gigs, Silverstone weekends and school holidays, sharper on quiet midweek nights, within limits you set. This runs through the booking system (Smoobu and Hospitable both offer it) or a pricing tool like PriceLabs, so it works with or without a rebuild.

Why last: items 1 to 3 fix the things that cost you money. This one is about never touching WordPress again.

£1,500one-off
Items 1 to 3 together
£900 one-off plus £79 a month. The rebuild stays optional.
£900
Evidence

Check our working

Everything above is a snapshot from 25 to 27 September 2026. Search results, speed scores and review counts change day to day.