Vacation Rental Website Ultimate Tool List
List Overview
This is the list of vetted tools that we use and we recommend you used to create your own vacation rental website.
Whether you choose to do it yourself or to have someone else to it for you, make sure that you pick elements from this list.
It will help you not only have a great looking, fully functional website, but also have a site that can be easily updated. This is way, you stay in control and can pursue your way to vacation rental business independence.
1. Reliable WordPress Hosting & Done-For-You Installation
Your goal to have a simple, reliable platform on which to build your website.
After doing some extensive research, we think that best option for you is Flywheel (www.getflywheel.com). Flywheel’s mission is to host WordPress site the best way possible. They have a great interface that is very welcoming to first-timers. Here’s what you get:
Free WordPress Set-Up
Flywheel set up your own WordPress installation for free. You just fill in a form and they do all the hard work for you.
If you already have a WordPress site, Flywheel takes care of the migration for free!Affordable and Reliable Hosting
They individual plan starts at $15 per month. For this price, you get caching optimized for WordPress to make your site run faster and protection from hacking (.Each server is configured according to WordPress security best practices.)
Wordpress Support
Their team of WordPress experts is ready to help with pretty much anything. Their focus on WordPress means they'll go a lot deeper than your typical hosting company, because they can help with everything from “My server is down” to “Can you recommend a plugin that does xyz?”
2. WordPress Themes for Vacation Rentals
Through trial and error, we have drafted a list of 3 vacation rental templates that look great and offer the functionalities that a good property website needs.
These templates are WordPress themes, that you can install in 1 click on top of your WordPress site. Then, all you will have to do is upload your content and your photos to customize these temmplates to suit your needs.
The 3 themes are sold online on the ThemeForest marketplace. you will see that they have tons of good reviews from other vacation rental owners. differ not only in their looks, but also in the type of vacation rental owner for which they are a good fit:
For 1 Property : The Bentuestu Theme
Bentuestu is an ultra-trendy and modern theme that incorporates a variety of features and functions to deliver a truly striking design. It adheres to the latest in web development standards and techniques – including a responsive layout (so your site looks great on mobile phones and tablets too), Retina-ready design (so your images look crisp and crystal clear on any device), built-in booking and reservation capabilities, and dozens of other features and enhancements. This theme delivers one of the best vacation rental designs on the market.
For several properties : The Luxury Villa Theme
“Luxury Villa” is great for presenting several vacation rentals on 1 site. It offers stunning looks and is very flexible.
This fullscreen theme features 5 different homepages, 4 different property layouts, 2 different areas page with maps, a drag and drop page builder (Visual Composer), is retina ready and provides infinite color variations. Each property can have a set of galleries.
For advanced WordPress users : The X Theme
X is very powerful, very flexible theme. It allows to create wonderful page without having to code anything.
It is not a ready-to-use vacation rental theme, but an amazing canvas, with 25+ demo sites that you can to create your website. This is for creative, advanced users. No coding skills required.
We use this incredible theme to build our own websites. Its visual editing tool called Cornerstone is insanely powerful and easy to use. This very page was created in 1 hour using Theme X, with no coding at all.
To get a better idea of what it can, read about its features here.
3. Your Booking Engine
Themes like Bentuestu and Luxury Villa come with very simple tools that allow visitors to see a calendar and make an enquiry.
This is great, but it may not be enough if you need to make your website a real online business.
We have selected here 2 tools that not only help generate enquiries, but also do much more such as handling payments, create a database of clients, synchronizing your site calendar with the calendars of your listings on Airbnb and Homeaway, and much more.
These tools add a booking engine to your site and come with an online platform where you can manage your bookings.
Solution 1: BookingSync (Widget + Online Plaftorm)
One one hand, BookingSync gives you a small widget to add to your website. With this, you can display your booking calendar and tale enquiries.
Then, you also get access to the BookingSync website, where you manage your bookings, change an enquiry into a booking, write notes about a guest or a booking, synchronise your booking calendar with Airbnb, Flipkey and many more.
Solution 2: Lodgix (Plugin + Online Platform)
Lodgix comes with a WordPress plugin that is easy to install.
You can then configure the plugin and the Lodgix online platform to support all rate and rule structures. Lodgix is integrated to many payment gateways including authorize.net and stripe.com. Fully integrated to HomeAway Book it Now, Flipkey, iCal and Facebook. Digital signatures, owner statements and damage protection available as optional modules.
