Why create a local accommodation website, your website!
If you want to create an accommodation booking website, remember that modern travelers want the booking process to be quick, easy and secure.
Having your own booking system on a website independent of traditional booking websites gives you access to a new sales channel and huge savings on commissions paid to marketplaces.
But before hiring a channel manager with high monthly fees, know that your website can be directly integrated with Airbnb's and company, directly from WordPress, the content management platform we use to build our clients' websites at Intuitiva.
There's nothing better than using WordPress to build your short-term rental website, if you want to know How much does a local accommodation website cost?, we wrote an excellent article comparing prices in Portugal, find out more here.
You've made the right decision if you're considering WordPress to build a vacation rental website.
WordPress is an excellent opportunity for small hotel owners, hostels, B&B owners and real estate agencies. WordPress allows us to do the job without high costs, quickly and professionally.
According to an analysis of over 700,000 hotel websites from over 150 countries, around 20% of all vacation rental websites are built on WordPress.
In this article, we will show you how you can build a fully functional website that can handle all your business processes: online booking, seasonal pricing, inventory management, fees, costs, etc.
We'll start by helping you better understand what it takes to create the best vacation rental website possible.
Essential requirements:
- Domain Name.
- Hosting (professional, managed hosting).
- WordPress.
- Reservations and accommodation management plugin.
Specific requirements for local accommodation sites:
- Theme – It can be any WordPress theme or one related to local accommodation, at Intuitiva we are specialists in the Divi theme and the Elementor theme, which we use for all the websites we build.
- A WordPress plugin to manage booking and integration with other channels where you list your AL property (to avoid the overbooking, manage reservations and accept payments).
While the first requirements are primarily responsible for hosting our data (hosting and domain) and visual branding (website modifications and visual presentation of the site), the most important is the booking accommodation plugin. Why? Because it handles all the critical business aspects: accommodation types, prices, online payments, availability and management of bookings. booking. So let’s focus on the plugin we use to add these features to WordPress.
Plugins needed to create a vacation rental website
Os plugins are one of the fundamental reasons why WordPress is so recommended and used. Plugins are a native system for expanding WordPress functionality. In the WordPress market, there are few solutions that compare. We tried several alternatives for creating local accommodation themes, and we concluded that the WordPress system MotoPress is one of the best options.
It is a robust solution that is continually being improved. It includes all the features we need to start an accommodation website and manage online bookings.
The MotoPress plugin allows you to handle various property rental scenarios, from a multi-room hotel, a chain of accommodations or a simple single-room vacation rental.
We will now show you the main features of the MotoPress booking plugin to help you understand whether it can be an effective way to build a website for your particular establishment.
The following points may continue to be useful for comparison, even if you have already chosen another solution.
Why create your vacation rental website in WordPress?
WordPress is an open source platform, with integrations with all channel managers. It is the website creation platform par excellence. It is estimated that more than 43% of all websites are made with WordPress.
Unlimited rooms and properties.
The MotoPress plugin allows you to use a system that allows you to handle multiple properties.
As we know, many other booking systems charge more when you add more rentals. But this plugin doesn’t limit you – you can create unlimited accommodation types and always pay the same.
To provide all the details about your property, you can add your description, a photo gallery, list amenities, specify the view and bed types, maximum occupancy, property size and more.
Flexibility of prices and seasons.
We can assign unlimited variables to prices based on whatever we want: special periods (Christmas, weddings), weekends, daily or weekly prices, etc. You can apply any variable to any type of accommodation. This is also a way to associate different prices to your rentals based on the accommodation benefits of the time of year in question.
Before associating the ratios, you will need to associate the seasons with their respective start and end dates.
Optional extras
You can create booking pages and services that guests can add to their reservations along with your accommodations.
You can choose the price of the service, the number of times the price should be charged and choose between adult or accommodation.
A food basket, a car rental, babysitting or any service of the sort – these are all examples of services that you can offer separately on the website.
For example, you can include the cost of breakfast in your room price by adding a “Suite with Breakfast” price so that your guests can choose. If you want to give your guests the choice, you can also add breakfast as a service, so they can choose it for just one day instead of every day.
Inventory control on your local accommodation website
Accurate and up-to-date inventory information is crucial to avoid overbooking and ensure a positive experience. A fully automated process of checking available and booked rooms is convenient.
The backend system keeps track of all data and sends automatic notifications. All appointments are automatically updated with the appropriate status. There is no need for manual control. We can filter all appointments in calendar mode:
You can also check the details of each booking in the “all bookings” menu, where you can see detailed information about a customer and their booking. You can edit customer details and view records.
However, manual interaction with inventory management is also easy:
You can check payment information and even add a payment manually if a customer makes a deposit.
We can edit the extras for each accommodation in just a few clicks:
You can block specific accommodations for reasons such as special events, maintenance, or because of phone reservations, such as:
With an excellent balance of manual and automatic control, you will easily avoid overcrowding, keeping your reputation at the highest level.
Online Payment Processing directly on your website
Concerns about the security of online payments are one of the main reasons why property owners prefer to rent in person. Fortunately, this is no longer a concern, with a variety of secure payment methods that are easy to implement on your WordPress website.
Using the Motopress plugin, you can easily use PayPal, 2checkout, Braintree, Stripe or any other using the WooCommerce Payments addon
As there may be many other payment methods local to our area, the WooCommerce payments addon will help you integrate any of them.
Additionally, you can define the payment type.
It's easy to turn your website into a secure booking platform, without paying commissions to intermediaries.
About the Reservation management of your AL
The plugin will allow you to confirm reservations: you can confirm them manually, ask the customer to confirm via email or allow automatic confirmations at the time of payment.
Let's say you just want to list all your properties and let guests leave a booking request without paying. In this case, you can use email confirmation.
The system will send confirmation and cancellation notifications to both the hotel and the customer. If you want to offer your customers excellent post-booking service, you can customize your email notifications to match your brand.
There are different email templates for all occasions, which can be changed both in content and design.
Customized local accommodation policies
You can apply custom booking rules to all accommodations and even seasons: check-in and check-out days for selected accommodations, set a minimum stay period, etc.
Here is a small demonstration of some key policies that you can apply to your plugin:
Set the minimum age for children in your establishment.
Cancellation Policy – you can allow your guests to cancel reservations, the system will send automatic cancellation notifications and will also unlock the accommodation for future bookings.
Pre-defined arrival/departure times.
Minimum or maximum length of stay (if the maximum is exceeded, travelers will have to choose another date or accommodation).
-Complete and correct orders
-Rates and information about fees, service charges; the customer will have access to all of them in the cost summary, and the hotel will also have this data.
A channel manager
You can link your property to others – the MotoPress plugin system allows you to sync all your properties with your website. The sync is automatic, it is only essential that the place where you rent the property supports the iCal file type.
Personalized discounts for your customers
Travelers love vouchers, especially your loyal clientele. This plugin will allow you to create personalized discount coupons.
You can customize the discount amount, set an expiration date, and choose which accommodations it applies to.
An intelligent search algorithm
The availability search calendar is excellent: it analyzes your custom rules, guest search parameters, and maximum and minimum stay periods to show you the best options.
The system also allows you to activate “recommended properties”, which will be the first to be shown to specific customers.
Additionally, a customer can book multiple accommodations with one reservation.
You just need to mark the maximum number of adults and children on the menu.
Multi-lingual solutione
If your business website is not designed for an English-speaking audience, you can change the language of the plugin to almost any language. Or, you can translate it to your language with any translation plugin.
The plugin is compatible with WPML – one of the most popular multilingual plugins on WordPress.
A multilingual website entails higher development and maintenance costs. Ideally, we suggest that you keep your website exclusively in English.
A perfect mobile experience
Nowadays, many travelers book on their phones and tablets. motoPress offers a mobile-friendly experience thanks to its excellent design, purpose-built to enable the fastest possible search and booking.
An easy start to creating a specialized vacation rental website
There are already many themes that are fully integrated with the MotoPress plugin.
Choosing a theme is doubly beneficial: first, you save money by not having to buy a separate theme and plugin; second, you don’t have to configure the design to get a theme that looks right. We can also prototype the layout of your website, resulting in a completely original design.
Some of the best free themes for this plugin are:
Oceanica Hotel WordPress theme – A lightweight theme that will ensure a pleasant and simple user experience, which is crucial for online booking. It is elegant, lightweight and efficient due to the booking engine.
Villagio Vacation Rental WordPress theme – focused on multiple rentals that you can do in different locations. Comes with many features of a fully functional plugin, multilingual support via WPML, and more.
Villagio Vacation Rental WordPress theme – focused on multiple rentals that you can do in different locations. Comes with many features of a fully functional plugin, multilingual support via WPML, and more.
Proposta Personalizada
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Hopefully, this article will have helped dispel the fears of building a vacation rental website outside of booking platforms.
With the MotoPress plugin, you can easily and fully manage your properties at different levels.
You can also manage bookings securely, sync your reservations with online travel agents, keep track of all legal information, and more.
All this accompanied by a high level of automation and an easy-to-use interface.
Remember, the first contact with your property happens online, make your customers' journey enjoyable even before they step foot inside!
Contact us today and ask for a personalized quote without obligation, we are your web design agency and digital communication, we can create your WordPress website with the MotoPress plugin or integrate any other channel manager into your new website.
