I checked 97 Hill Country lodging websites on a phone. Here’s what I found.

I talk a lot on this site about phone speed, Book buttons and the details Google and AI tools read. I wanted to know how common those problems really are, not guess. So I picked a region I know well, the Texas Hill Country, and checked the websites of the small, independent places that come up when a traveler searches for somewhere to stay.

This isn't a ranking, and I'm not naming anyone. The point is the overall picture, and what it means if you own one of these places.

It's also the first in a series. The second checks the lodging websites around Fiery Gizzard State Park in Tennessee.

Most of these properties are doing the hard part right. They have their own website, and the Book button usually leads to a real booking page. Where they lose guests is everything before that tap: a slow, heavy homepage on a phone, and missing details that make it easy for Google, AI tools and guests to understand the business.

The median phone score was 57. Most sites landed between 50 and 69, in Google's “needs work” range. 26 of 87 scored under 50, and only 4 reached 90.

The main content was slow to show up, too. Google wants it on screen within 2.5 seconds. Only 3 of 87 sites did that in this test. The median was 12.4 seconds, and 50 sites took more than 10.

A fair note on those numbers: Google's test simulates an older phone on a slow connection, so a guest on good Wi-Fi will see a faster page. But it's the test Google offers for checking speed, and plenty of travelers are booking from a phone on a weak signal, often while comparing you with the place down the road.

The median homepage weighed 4.3 MB. 37 weighed more than 5 MB, 17 more than 10 MB, and the heaviest was almost 32 MB. Only 16 came in at 2 MB or less.

That's usually photos uploaded straight from a camera, background videos, and add-ons stacked up over the years. It's also the easiest problem to fix. My note on why a vacation rental website loads slow covers how, including a real Comal Inn photo that went from 4.8 MB to 96 KB.

This was the best news in the study. Of the 73 homepages where the check found Book links, 65 sent every one to a real booking page, either a page on the property's own site or its booking engine. Only 2 sent guests to Airbnb, and 4 had at least one link that was broken or didn't go anywhere.

On 16 homepages, the check didn't find a Book link at all. Some of those use buttons built with a script the quick check can't see, so that number may be high. But if a guest has to hunt for how to book, some won't.

Across the 44 sites where the check could tell which booking engine was in use, the most common were ResNexus, Campspot, WebRezPro, Cloudbeds and Newbook. There's no single standard, and that's fine. What matters is that the button reaches it.

Most set a page title and description, which is what shows in Google results. After that it drops off. 69% had a tap-to-call phone number, about half had an email link, and 21 of 89 had neither, so a guest on a phone had no one-tap way to reach them.

Only 23 of 89, about 26%, included lodging details in the page code, the small piece of structured data that tells Google and AI tools this is an inn, a campground or a vacation rental. It's invisible to guests, it doesn't take long to add, and it's one of the clearest ways to help ChatGPT and Google understand what you are.

Eight sites also turned off pinch-to-zoom, which makes them harder to use for anyone who needs to make text bigger.

No type stood out as clearly better. Inns had a slightly higher median score, glamping a lower one, but the spread inside each group was much bigger than the gap between groups. The same goes for lodging details in the page code, which were rare in every group except glamping, where 3 of the 6 had them.

If you run a small lodging property anywhere, the study points to a short list:

1. Check your phone score. Most sites in the study scored under 90. Getting yours above that puts you ahead of almost every site in this study.
2. Shrink your homepage. If it's over 2 MB, start with the photos and any background video.
3. Tap every Book button on your phone. Most of the sites in the study got this right. One broken link can cost you a booking, so check every one.
4. Add a tap-to-call number and an email link. Guests on a phone should be one tap from you.
5. Add lodging details to your page code. Three out of four places skip it, which makes it an easy way to stand out.

Which properties. I ran 24 Google searches for inns, B&Bs, cabins, RV parks, campgrounds and glamping in Hill Country towns: Fredericksburg, Wimberley, New Braunfels, Gruene, Boerne, Kerrville, Bandera, Comfort, Johnson City, Marble Falls, Dripping Springs, Canyon Lake, Concan and Leakey, plus broader searches like cabins on the Guadalupe River. I kept independent properties with their own website and left out booking sites like Airbnb, directories, tourism boards and national chains. I also left out Comal Inn, the property I manage. That gave 97 properties: 26 inns and B&Bs, 29 cabins and vacation rentals, 36 RV parks and campgrounds, and 6 glamping sites.

What I checked. Each homepage went through the Firsthand Stays website check once, in October 2026. It runs Google PageSpeed Insights on a simulated phone, then reads the homepage like a phone browser would, and follows each Book, Reserve and Availability link to see where it leads.

The limits. It's one test per site, and scores move a few points between runs. Google couldn't finish the speed test on 10 sites, and 8 homepages couldn't be read because the site blocked automated visitors or didn't respond, so totals use 87 or 89 sites as noted. It only looks at the homepage. And it's a sample from one region, found through Google, not every property in Texas. I didn't include whether sites have an llms.txt file, because many website builders now add one automatically, so it says little about the site.