The pre-season digital checklist for Bodrum businesses●

By late October, Bodrum exhales. The marina thins out, the beach clubs stack their loungers, and many restaurants along the Yalıkavak waterfront pull down their shutters. If you run a hotel, a restaurant or a charter business here, this quiet stretch is the best time of year to fix your digital side. In June, with the phone ringing and every table full, nobody has the time or the patience to rewrite a menu page or correct old opening hours on Google. Between November and March, you have both.

This guide walks through what to review over the winter, in a sensible order. The aim is not to rebuild everything. It is to make sure that when May arrives, guests can find you, understand what you offer and book without friction.

Start by reading last season honestly

Before adding anything new, look at what you already know. Where did last summer's guests actually come from? How many bookings came through OTAs, how many by phone, how many over WhatsApp, and how many directly through your website? In most businesses this information is scattered across a reservations sheet, a notebook at the front desk and the memory of whoever worked the evening shift. Pulling it into one page over the winter makes it much clearer where your time and budget should go.

Your Google Business Profile dashboard shows searches, direction requests and calls by month. If your website has analytics installed, check which pages people visited, which language they browsed in and where they dropped off. A page that was busy in June and quiet by September tells you a lot about your own season rhythm.

It is also worth sitting down with your team. What did guests ask about again and again? Parking, the kids' pool hours, how to arrange an airport transfer? Every repeated question is a gap on your website or your Google profile. Writing the answer down once in winter is far cheaper than giving it out loud hundreds of times in August.

Website: content, speed and mobile

Many of your guests will first see you on a phone screen, often from a sunbed or a taxi from the airport. So start your review on your own phone, on mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi. If pages load slowly, photos crop awkwardly or the booking button is buried halfway down the page, those are your first fixes.

Then read every page as if you were a stranger. Old prices, dishes you no longer serve, services you have dropped or a heading that still says "Summer 2025" quietly erode trust. Check the photos too: what a guest sees online should match what they find when they arrive. Winter is a good time to plan a new shoot, but schedule it for early May, when the garden is green and the pool is full.

Google Business Profile and reviews

For most restaurants and beach clubs in Bodrum, showing up on Google Maps matters even more than the website. Google says it ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. The winter job here is simple but easy to skip: check every field on your profile.

• Are summer and winter hours entered separately, and is any seasonal closure shown clearly?
• Is your primary category as specific as it can be? "Seafood restaurant" reaches better searches than "Restaurant".
• Are the menu, price range, booking link and phone number current?
• Are there unanswered reviews? Reply to older ones too, especially the critical ones, in a calm and personal tone.

Google notes that helpful, positive replies to reviews show you are responsive. Replying to a German or English review in the same language also speaks to the next guest reading your profile.

Booking flow and OTA dependence

OTAs are an important shop window for many Bodrum hotels, but the commission on every booking adds up to a serious line by the end of the season. Winter is the moment to understand why direct bookings stay low. Go through your own website's booking process as a guest would. How many steps does choosing dates take? Is the price clear? Does the payment page feel trustworthy? Which language does the confirmation email arrive in?

For restaurants and beach clubs, bookings usually come by phone or WhatsApp, and that is fine. The problem is when the channel is invisible. Your website and Google profile should make it obvious, in one sentence and one button, how to reserve.

Set WhatsApp up like a system

In Bodrum, WhatsApp is where the real conversation with guests happens, and international visitors pick that up quickly. "Do you have a table for four tomorrow night?" now arrives as a message, not an email. Setting the line up properly in winter saves hours in summer.

Fill in your business profile, address and hours in WhatsApp Business. Write saved replies in Turkish and English for the questions you always get: location, parking, transfers, cancellation terms. Add a polite away message for after hours. And decide now who watches the line, and when. That decision is much harder to make in mid-July.

The checklist

Print this and pin it up in the office. Aim to tick everything off by the end of March.

1. I have last season's booking sources in one table.
2. I opened my website on my phone, on mobile data, and went through every page.
3. I removed old prices, menus and dates.
4. My Google profile has correct summer and winter hours, category and booking link.
5. I replied to every unanswered Google review, in the reviewer's language.
6. I tested my own booking flow from start to finish.
7. My WhatsApp Business profile is complete, with saved replies in Turkish and English.
8. A native speaker has read the English version of my website.
9. I have a date booked for an early-May photo shoot.
10. I know who will look after each digital channel during the season.

Do one last pass in March. Check that your winter changes are still in place, and look for edits that other users may have suggested on your Google listing; a wrong phone number that slips through can cost you a lot of bookings in May.

If you would like a second pair of eyes on this list, we are happy to look at your business's digital setup together on a free discovery call. There is no rush. The season is still a long way off, and there is plenty of time to think.