How to create a hotel booking website with WordPress (The ultimate guide)

how to create a hotel booking website with WordPress

Table of Contents

Introduction

It’s no secret that the internet is the most powerful tool to get the desired traction for your hotel or vacation rental property business. But it’s not just enough to create a hotel booking website in the name of mere online presence.

To get the desired number of booking orders from guests or customers, you need to make sure you create a website that is attractive, functional, and user-friendly. 

With that in mind, we will show you how to create a hotel booking website with WordPress in this ultimate guide. We will cover everything from choosing a domain name and hosting plan to installing a hotel booking theme and plugin.

We’ll also discuss the benefits of using WordPress over other SaaS-based solutions or cloud software. Next, we’re also going to provide a breakdown of the costs involved in building a hotel booking website. After that, we’ll talk about the features of a standard hotel booking website.

As an added bonus, we’ll be highlighting on some promotional tips and will also be dishing out a number of effective tips so that you can make your website faster, safer, and more search engine-friendly.

Whether you’re a hotel owner or an agency, you’ll have all the knowledge you need to create a beautiful, functional, and affordable hotel booking website by the end of this tutorial.

But before we begin…

We can feel your pain!

We took the moment to share the pains you might be going through while reading this article: 

  • Do you feel the cost of building a full-fledged hotel booking website is pretty hefty with the available solutions?
  • Haunted by the high cost of hiring a developer or given the responsibility to develop it?  
  • Overwhelmed to find a hotel booking software solution that meets all your needs?
  • Worried about extending or tweaking the existing use cases of your current hotel booking engine?
  • Do you abominate the steep learning curve of most hotel booking solutions? 

If that sounds too good to be true, keep on reading the post.

How lucrative the hotel booking business is

In case you are wondering how lucrative a hotel booking business is, here are three facts for you:

hotel booking statistics
  • The global hotel booking market is expected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025.
  • The average annual revenue for a sole proprietorship hotel booking business generates $94k in revenue per year.
  • 57% of hotel bookings are made online.
  • As of October 2021, 665 new hotels had opened in the US with a total of 85,306 rooms. 21 of these were in New York City, 21 were in Atlanta, and 19 were in Orlando.

Here’s an attempt at a humorous, viral click-to-tweet using a statistic from the blog post:

Hotel owners beware – 57% of bookings are made online! Your website better be lit or guests will click elsewhere for their rest and relaxation.” – Click to Tweet.

Therefore, if you’re still sitting on the fence to make an informed decision, now is the perfect time to build a hotel booking website.

Why choose WordPress to create a hotel booking website

Why choose WordPress to create a hotel booking website

There are many reasons why you might choose WordPress to create a hotel booking website. In fact, WordPress has numerous advantages over other SaaS-based solutions or cloud Software.

By WordPress, we mean WordPress.org – not WordPress.com. Hence, we’ll be using WordPres.org in our tutorial. Please note that WordPress.com has several limitations when compared to WordPress.org. Being the most popular CMS (Content Management System), WordPress.org might help you with the following benefits:

WordPress is free and open-source

Did you know that the most popular proprietary or cloud-based hotel booking builder costs roughly $500 to $1000? 

It might sound normal, but if you create a hotel booking website on WordPress, you can build the basic site for free. Even if you are adding advanced features, you can still do it threefold less than the price of the proprietary ones. 

Since WordPress is an open-source project and the fact that it’s completely free to use, you don’t have to pay any license fees. In addition, you’ll find a fleet of free themes and plugins in the WordPress repository. 

Most of these free themes and plugins also provide advanced features with paid plans which will allow you to add custom features and custom appearance to your hotel booking website. 

WordPress is easy to use

WordPress comes with a free WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) block editor. You can literally build any design you can imagine with its drag and drop based editor.

The best part is that you’ll find tons of free tutorials and guides on the web. In most cases, you’ll find ready-made templates to turn your WordPress website into a hotel booking website in the blink of an eye.

You can also use third-party free page builders like Elementor, Visual Composer, Oxygen Builder and Beaver Builder to have an even better experience in building your hotel booking website

WordPress is scalable 

As your hotel business grows, you may need to scale your WordPress based booking website using themes, plugins or even with custom codes. 

That said, the WordPress ecosystem abounds with a wide range of themes, plugins and developers, you’ll find it pretty easy to scale your website down the line. From booking to payment processing to SEO plugins you can get them all at your fingers tips.

WordPress is secure

A hotel booking website will contain a lot of sensitive data like user’s information, password, transactional data and much more. So, security measures come to the spot immediately. Luckily, if you are keeping your WordPress website ( The core, themes and plugins) updated regularly, you’ll be just fine.

For some added safety measures, you can capitalize WordPress security plugins as well, just like an antivirus system for your desktop computer. Most safety plugins ships with a backup feature by which you can restore your website in case anything goes wrong.

To keep your website safer, we recommend you go through this WordPress website security guide as well. 

If you are considering creating a hotel booking website, we highly recommend using WordPress. It is a great platform that can help you create a successful website that meets your needs.

What’s free and what’s not? What’s the cost to create a Hotel Booking Website?

Before we move forward to discuss the tutorial on how to create a hotel booking website with WordPress, we would like to clarify what’s free and what’s not.

When we’re talking about a free WordPress website, we usually exclude the pricing of domain and hosting services.

But if you include the pricing of a domain and hosting, it might cost you a little extra. For your understanding, we’re going to give you a glimpse of the requirements to create a hotel booking website with WordPress:

  • WordPress (Free)
  • Domain (Paid)
  • SSL Certificate (Free)
  • Hosting (Paid)
  • Themes (Free)
  • Plugins (Free)

But if you want to use premium plugins, you can expect to spend anywhere from $70 to $150 to create a basic hotel booking website using WordPress

Here’s the total cost to build a hotel booking website:

ItemsFirst Year Pricing (USD)Subsequent Years Pricing (USD)
WordPress$0$0
Domain$10$0
SSL$0$0
Hosting$60$60
Theme$0$0
Plugins$0$0
Total Pricing$70 (For First Year)$60 (For Subsequent Years)

Features of a hotel booking website you can’t do without

Let’s no longer beat around the bush and discuss some of the most important features you can’t do without while making a hotel booking website:

A responsive design

how to create a hotel booking website with WordPress - responsive design

Your customers or visitors might use different devices to access your website. According to Allconnect, “Mobile phones generated over 60% of website traffic in 2022, with desktops and tablets only generating about 39%.”

So regardless of the screen size, you need to make sure that you have made your website completely mobile responsive so that it does not break on smartphones or tablets. 

High-quality images

The images of your hotel or its rooms should be of high quality. They should be well-lit, visually appealing and clear, so much so that guests feel appealing to them. 

“A picture is worth a thousand words” – So, make sure that the hotel photos you post give enough idea of what your hotel is to offer. 

A clear and concise booking engine with a user-friendly interface

A clear and concise booking engine with a user-friendly interface

You may consider incorporating all the hotel booking system features. But the reality is people don’t look for features but rather intuition. Meaning you need to make the user interface as simple as possible with only the necessary features. 

People who want to book your hotel should be able to navigate to the information or functionalities they need, even if they have never used a hotel booking system before. 

A secure payment system 

A secure payment system 

The hotel booking website should have a set of hassle-free payment systems. We suggest you deploy payment systems that are secure and fast to build a sense of trust and confidence in the mind of the customers. 

To this end, you can consider using SSL certificates and renowned payment gateways. Also, you can’t forget to secure the entire hotel booking website.

SEO-friendly hotel booking solution

SEO-friendly hotel booking solution

There are many hotel booking solutions that will only allow you to create a hotel reservation website. But they don’t focus on the importance of SEO-optimized content. Therefore, whatever hotel booking tool you choose should include SEO optimization functionalities. 

Social media integration for your hotel booking website

Word-of-mouth customers might want to share your hotel booking website with their friends and family. This is the reason your hotel accommodation platform must have a social media integration feature. Consider adding multiple platforms while integrating such features so that people can share on their preferred platforms.

Social media login or registration (Passwordless accessibility)

The easier your hotel reservation website is to use, the more conversion you can expect. To this end, your hotel booking should be able to allow its users to log in or register using their already logged-in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media account. 

This way, the users don’t have to enter their password or verify their email. What a great idea to improve your website’s conversion rate, isn’t it?

A customer rating and review section

A customer rating and review section

This is an excellent way to showcase to a potential customer what other people have said about your service. If you can gather a few good ratings and reviews from the paid customers, bam! You’re good to go! With the rating and review section, you can build trust and thus improve the conversion rate even more. 

A live chat functionality

live chat for hotel booking website

Chat functions are needed to give assistance to potential customers or visitors. Users might have a lot of queries in their minds. 

But in the absence of chat functionality, they might bounce off of your website, which might hurt the conversion rate optimization. 

So, consider adding live chat functionality and even artificial intelligence-based chat functionality in the first place. 

A blog section for your hotel booking website

blogging for hotel booking websites

You should also create SEO optimized helpful content for your visitors so that they can get tips and tricks on hotel booking or travel booking websites. 

For this purpose, we recommend you keep a blog section on your website. This content marketing approach will help you get a lot of organic visitors from the search engine. 

In short, employing all these important functionalities on your hotel booking website will increase awareness and increase the possibility of more bookings. 

A loyalty program

Who doesn’t like getting rewarded? Putting a loyalty program in place will definitely increase customer engagement, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. 

Not only will this help enhance customer conversion rate but it also will help you create a long-lasting customer relationship. 

To conclude, these are just some of the most important features you can’t do without when making a hotel booking website. 

By including these features, you can create a website that is user-friendly, secure, and effective at generating bookings.

What are the three best hotel booking website builder tools?

We’ve handpicked the three most effective hotel booking website builder solutions for WordPress. Here are they:

Tourfic – A free, scalable and powerful hotel booking website builder

Tourfic - A free, scalable and powerful hotel booking website builder

Tourfic is a free, easy-to-use, scalable and highly customizable WordPress plugin to create a hotel booking website just like Airbnb, Agoda and Booking.com. If you are on the lookout for the idea of how to create a hotel booking website with WordPress with a dedicated hotel booking website builder plugin, nothing can beat the idea of choosing Tourfic. 

It is well-aligned not just for building a hotel booking website but also for creating a tour booking website as well. Tourfic largely depends on WooCommerce to process online booking and payment systems.

The best part is that you can also turn your hotel or tour booking website into a multi-vendor hotel business website where you can let other people list their hotels or property booking as well. 

Here are some of the prominent features of Tourfic:

  • Unlimited hotel and room listings.
  • Advanced pricing logic.
  • Hotel photo gallery.
  • Room availability check is based on Ajax.
  • Dedicated customer review system.
  • Enquiry and ask a question form.
  • Wishlist for hotels.
  • Room inventory management.
  • Advanced/partial payment options.
  • Integration with various payment methods powered by WooCommerce.
  • APIs for affiliate integration.
  • Multivendor functionalities.

Pricing: Tourfic starts from a $59 per year subscription and a lifetime deal is also available, which starts from $189 (Currently selling at $149). 

WP Booking System – A fantastic hotel booking website builder

WP Booking System - A fantastic hotel booking website builder

WP Booking System is a free popular lodging business website builder with over 9000 active users from across the world. It boasts high user satisfaction and is designed for rental businesses such as hotel rooms, homes, lodges, cars, motorcycles and boats. 

You can create and customize almost any type of booking calendar and form. Plus, you can effectively manage bookings by exerting minimal effort and time. With the premium version, you can even receive payments through various platforms.

Here are some of the prominent features of the WP Booking System:

  • Receive and manage bookings
  • Accept online and offline payments
  • Generate shortcodes for booking calendars and forms
  • Support for multiple languages
  • Professional support for booking calendar-related questions
  • iCalendar sync, import, and export
  • Create an unlimited number of booking calendars
  • Create an unlimited number of booking forms
  • Edit multiple dates with just one click
  • Display an overview reservation calendar

Pricing

WP Booking System is free and its premium version starts from $59 per year. 

Booking Calendar – An excellent hotel booking website solution

Booking Calendar - An excellent hotel booking website solution

Booking Calendar is a popular hotel reservation plugin that offers the essential nitty-gritty to manage reservations. Its customizability of calendars and modern and clean admin panel is quite praiseworthy.

The good thing is that it supports various booking logics, allowing your users to define available dates and offer time-slot-based reservations. 

Apart from hotel reservations and property rentals, it caters to a wide range of other businesses, including meeting appointments, client scheduling, event scheduling, equipment rentals and event scheduling.

Here are some of the prominent features of the Booking Calendar:

  • Set initial unavailable days
  • Calendar availability display
  • Booking form customization
  • Booking management and notifications
  • Syncing with other services
  • Multiple booking resources
  • Online payment integration
  • Seasonal pricing
  • Advanced hourly bookings
  • Capacity and availability management

Pricing: The premium version starts from $79 per year.

How to create a hotel booking website with WordPress in just 13 steps

No more fusses. Let’s see how we can make a hotel booking website with WordPress. 

Step 1: Get a domain and SSL certificate to create your hotel booking website

A domain name is the unique address of your website that looks something like this (themefic.com). No matter what website you’re building, the first thing you need is to secure a domain name. 

While picking up a domain name, you need to pick a unique address. Also, don’t overlook the fact that it should reflect the branding ground of your business. 

We suggest you pick up a domain name from domain name registrars like Namecheap, GoDaddy or Name. Note that some domain name registrars also provide free or paid SSL certificates.

For any eCommerce website, SSL services are a must. Why? Because it improves customer trust and sends a positive signal to Google about the credibility of your website. So, don’t miss out on an SSL certificate for your domain.

Step 2: Get a hosting service for your hotel booking website

Hosting is the online space where you will keep your website so people can visit and interact with it. While selecting a hosting provider, look for one that provides at least 99.9% uptime and good server speed. 

However, it’s not necessary to pay for something you need in the first few months as there will be only a few visitors. So, we recommend you go for the basic pricing plan for the first few months.

After that, once you get a hefty amount of traffic, scale the hosting plan to the higher pricing tiers. For any WordPress website, we recommend great hosting providers like Bluehost, Kinsta, Hostinger, GoDaddy or anything that you prefer. 

Step 3: Install WordPress on your hosting

Once you get your hosting service platform, you need to install WordPress on it. Luckily, most hosting providers install WordPress on their own. If not, you can contact them to install it on your behalf.

If you are a DIY-type person, feel free to watch this tutorial that shows how to install WordPress on a live server.

Step 4: Configure the basic settings of your hotel booking website

Before we proceed on how to create a hotel booking website, let’s make sure that you have properly installed WordPress on your hosting platform.

Now, it’s time to configure some basic settings. To do so, head to the WordPress admin dashboard and then select Settings > General.

navigate to WordPress admin dashboard and then go to General

Check the Anyone Can Register box from the Membership option. 

Check the Anyone Can Register box from the Membership option

Click the Save Changes button. 

Click the Save Changes button

Step 5: Install a hotel booking theme on your hotel booking website

WordPress comes with a free default theme from its maker and it’s good enough for most of the users. But we recommend you install a hotel booking website-focused theme. 

Before we move further on the tutorial on how to create a hotel booking website with WordPress, remember these top reasons for a visitor to leave a website:

  • Slow loading (88.5%)
  • Non-responsive website (73.1%)
  • Bad navigation (61.5%)
  • Outdated design (38.5%)
  • Poor content structure (34.6%)
  • Obtrusive use of Audio/Video (3.8%)
top reasons for a visitor to leave a hotel booking website

Source: UV Designs

Hence, for this tutorial, we’re going to install a dedicated but free travel and tour booking theme called Travelefic.

To install the theme, navigate to the WordPress Admin Dashboard and then navigate to Appearance > Themes

navigate to Appearance > Themes

Now, select the Add New button. 

select the Add New button

Search for the keyword, ‘Travelfic’. 

Search for the keyword, ‘Travelfic’

Hit the Install button. 

Hit the Install button

Click Activate to take effect. 

Click Activate to take effect

You can now check the Visit Site option to check how your site looks and feels from the front end. 

check the Visit Site option

Here’s how the site looks from the front end. (It’s not ready yet as it needs content. After the end of the tutorial, we’ll have content on the site.)

19 front end view - Themefic

Step 6: Installing a hotel booking plugin and other necessary plugins

Before we add content, we have to install the necessary plugins. Interestingly, after installing the theme (Travelefic), you’ll get the following message to install the recommended plugins. 

The theme suggests installing the following plugins:

Let’s hit the Begin Installing plugins option to install the plugins. 

hit the Begin Installing plugins option

Now, select all plugins by checking the box indicated by the arrow.

select all plugins by checking the box indicated by the arrow

Select the Bulk actions dropdown menu. 

Select the Bulk actions dropdown menu

Click on the Install option. 

Select the Install option

Hit the Apply button.

Hit the Apply button

Now click the Return to Required Plugins Installer option.

Now click the Return to Required Plugins Installer option

Select Plugin

Select Plugins

Then again, select the Bulk Actions dropdown menu. 

select the Bulk Actions dropdown menu

Select Activate option.

Select Activate option

Finally, hit the Apply button to activate them altogether. 

hit the Apply button to activate them altogether

Now, you’ll get to see the following success message. 

get to see the following success message

Tourfic comes with two buiders – One is the hotel builder and the other one is the tour builder. As we are building a hotel booking website, we’re going to disable the tour builder option.

To do so, go to WordPress Admin Dashboard and then select Tourfic Settings > Settings

WordPress Admin Dashboard and then select Tourfic Settings > Settings

Select Tours from the checkbox to disable it. 

Select Tours from the checkbox

Hit the Save button.

Hit the Save button

Step 7: Setting up payment methods to accept booking orders

To receive payments for your hotel booking orders, you need to integrate the payment gateways. To to so, head to the WordPress Admin Dashboard and then navigate to WooCommerce > Settings.

hotels > settings

Open the Payments tab.

WooCommerce > Settings > payments tab

Now, you can find readily available payment methods. You can use the Finish set up button to configure each of the methods. 

For example, you can enter the bank details such as inserting the bank name, account holder name, account number and other information. 

Finish setup

Now that you have configured the payment methods turn on the three available payment methods using the toggle buttons:

  • Direct Bank Transfer.
  • Check Payments.
  • Cash on Delivery.

Note: You can, however, also use the other free WooCommerce payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, Mollie, Amazon Pay and others to take payments online. 

enable available payment methods

Hit the Save Changes button. 

Save Changes

Step 8: Create and publish the necessary hotel booking website pages

Now that we have configured all the basic settings, it’s time to create and publish the necessary pages.

Le’ts create and publish the hotel listing page.

First things first, we need to create a hotel listing shortcode from the plugin, Tourfic. So, navigate to the WordPress Admin Dashboard and then go to Tourfic Settings > Settings.

Tourfic Settings > Shortcodes

From the Hotel section, select the Generate Shortcode button.

Select Generate Shortcode for Hotels

Hit the Generate button. 

hit Generate button

Copy the shortcode by selecting this icon.

Copy the shortcode using this button

Close the popup.

Close the popup

Now, navigate to the WordPress admin dashboard, then go to Pages > Add New

Pages > Add New

Close the popup.

Close the popup

Give a page title you prefer. Since the page we’re going to create includes the list of hotels, we’re giving it a name like ‘Hotels’.

Give a page title

After that, paste the shortcode to create the Hotels page, just like below. You can also change the hotel count and style if you want.

paste the shortcode

Finally, publish the page by clicking the Publish button.

publish the page by clicking the Publish button

Note: You can also add a slider for recent hotels on your home page by adding the shortcode [tf_recent_hotel orderby=’name’ order=’ASC’ count=-1 slidestoshow=5].

You can also copy, paste and generate the list of hotels or sliders with Elementor too. Like the block editor templates (as shown here), Elementor-based templates are also fully customizable. Therefore, you can shape your website with any design you can imagine.

Using shortcodes, you can create a number of necessary pages in the same way. We recommend you create and use shortcodes to create other necessary pages like Hotel Locations, Recent Hotels, Search Form, Reviews, Recent Blog and Vendor Hotels & Tours pages.

Now, you need to add the pages to the website menu.

Let’s set the Hotels page on the navigation bar. To do so, navigate to the WordPress Admin Dashboard and then select Appearance > Menus

select Appearance > Menus

Give a name to the menu. Here we have given a name “Tourfic Menu”. 

Give a name to the menu

Check the Primary and the Mobile Menu checkboxes. 

Check the Primary and the Mobile Menu checkboxes

Hit the Create Menu button.

Hit the Create Menu button

Select the View All tab.

Select the View All tab

Check the pages and links that you want to add to the menu. 

68 select the pages and links - Themefic

Click Add to Menu option.

Click Add to Menu option

After adding to the menu, you can also rearrange the order of the items by just dragging and dropping.

You can even create a menu hierarchy by placing a menu item as the subitems of the other menu items. 

you can also rearrange the order of the items by just dragging and dropping

Save the menu. 

Save the menu

Step 9: Adding Hotel Locations

Adding hotel locations will make your website organized and will be highly beneficial for visitors. Visitors will be able to find their preferred location to book hotels more efficiently. 

To add hotel locations, navigate to the WordPress admin dashboard and then go to Hotels > Location

go to Hotels > Location

Now, enter the location name, add a description and upload images of the location. 

enter the location name, add a description and upload images of the location

Finally, hit the Add New Location button to save the location. 

hit the Add New Location button to save the location

This way, you can create unlimited hotel locations in Tourfic.

you can create unlimited hotel locations in Tourfic

Step 10: Adding hotel features 

By Hotel Features, we mean the extra amenities like if you offer free WiFi connection, microwave oven service, swimming pool, shampoos, coffee, tea and so on. 

To create hotel features, navigate to the WordPress admin dashboard and then go to Hotels > Features

go to Hotels > Features.

Now, you’ll have the option to give a feature name, description and icon. For icons, you can use Font Awesome icons or even upload a custom icon library.

give a feature name, description and icon

Once you’re done, hit the Add New Feature button to save the feature. 

hit the Add New Feature button

This way, you can create multiple features for your hotel booking website.

you can create multiple features

Step 11: Adding hotels 

Now, it’s time to add hotels to your hotel booking website.

To add a hotel, head to the WordPress admin dashboard and then select Hotels > Add New.

select Hotels > Add New

Give a name and description of the hotel. 

Give a name and description of the hotel

After that, use the toggle button from the General tab to determine whether to make it a featured hotel in case you have multiple hotels.

This feature will also be useful if you are allowing other hotel owners to list their hotels. 

use the toggle button from the General tab to determine whether to make it a featured hotel in case you have multiple hotels.

Next, let’s enter the hotel address from the Location tab.

let’s enter the hotel address from the Location tab

Now comes an exciting part! If you enter the address on the dynamic location search, you’ll see that the system is suggesting the real-time address registered from OpenStreetMap

real-time address registered from OpenStreetMap

Select the address that matches your preference the best. 

Select the address that matches your preference the best. 

You can also insert the latitude and longitude manually for further precision.

You can also insert the latitude and longitude manually for more precision

As we mentioned earlier, your website really needs crisp images and high-quality videos. Now, click on the Add Gallery option from the Gallery and Video tab. 

You can add multiple images. The more attractive images you add, the better you can make your visitors crave hotel booking.

click on the Add Gallery option from the Gallery and Video tab

Now, you can also add a video tour of your hotel with an URL of YouTube and Vimeo. It should include the roadside view and the inside ambiance. 

add a video tour of your hotel with an URL of YouTube and Vimeo

You can add a premium service, like picking up the guests from the airport. This is a paid feature, though. 

You can add a premium service, like picking up the guests from the airport

Next, let’s add the data of your hotel rooms. You can do so by selecting Add New Room button from the tab Room Management

let’s add the data of your hotel rooms. You can do so by selecting Add New Room button from the tab Room Management

After that, you’ll get the option to insert the room information. For example, you can:

  • Specify whether the room is double or single. 
  • Insert the number of beds available.
  • Show the allowed number of people or children. 
  • Add gallery (pro).
  • Add video.
  • Specify room size. 
  • Add description. 
  • Add the extra amenities (WiFi service, tea, coffee, oven, swimming pool etc.)
  • Add room pricing. 
  • Dynamic multiple pricing by night.
  • So forth. 
insert the room information

You can add as many rooms as you want. 

Now, let’s add F.A.Q.s so that you can help your visitors book your hotel faster.

To add FAQs, select the Add FAQ button from the F.A.Q section.

add F.A.Q.s

This way, you can add unlimited FAQs. 

Now, since you’re dealing with financial transactions, keeping a terms and conditions section for the hotel booking engine would be wise. Select the Terms & Conditions tab and enter the Section Title and Terms & Conditions there.

Select the Terms & Conditions tab and enter the Section Title and Terms & Conditions

From the settings tab, you can also tune some settings for the hotel, such as:

  • Enabling or disabling Review Section
  • Enabling or disabling Share Option
  • Editing the titles of the fields.
  • Adding hotel inquiry option.
Settings tab

Again add hotel location, features and a hotel featured image from the following areas:

add hotel location, features and a hotel featured image from the following areas

Now, let’s preview the hotel from the front end using the Preview button.

Step 12: Adding a registration form on your hotel booking website

To add a registration page, you need to get the paid version of the plugin, Tourfic. However, we still have other ways to do it. After all, that’s the beauty of the WordPress ecosystem! That being said, we can also use any third party registration plugin for that. 

To add a free third-party plugin, navigate to the WordPress admin dashboard and then go to Plugins > Add New.

go to Plugins > Add New

Search for the keyword, ‘Registration’. After that, you’ll find the User Registration plugin from WPEverest

Search for the keyword, ‘Registration’. After that, you’ll find the User Registration plugin from WPEverest. 

Click the Install Now button. 

Install Now

Activate the plugin.

activate the plugin

Start the Setup Wizard

Start the Setup Wizard

If you want to share the non-sensitive plugin data, select the Allow button. Otherwise, select the No Thanks button. Let’s select Allow

If you want to share the non-sensitive plugin data, select the Allow button. Otherwise, select the No Thanks button. Let’s select Allow. 

You’ll see that the Default Registration Form is installed. Select the Go to Dashboard option. 

You’ll see that the Default Registration Form is installed. Select the Go to Dashboard option. 

Copy the shortcode using the icon indicated by the red arrow. 

Copy the shortcode using the icon indicated by the red arrow. 

Finally, paste the shortcode [user_registration_form id=”65″] onto any page or post on your website and add the page to the navigation menu.  

Step 13: Setting a home page for your hotel booking website

To set the homepage, simply navigate to the WordPress admin dashboard and then select Settings > Reading.

select Settings > Reading

Select A static page.

Select A static page

Select the page you want to set as the home page. In this case, we’re selecting the Hotels page from the Homepage section. 

selecting the Hotels page from the Homepage section

Hit the Save Changes button. 

Hit the Save Changes button. 

Now, let’s edit the home page by adding a search form. To edit the home page, log in to the WordPress admin dashboard and then go to Pages > Add new page

go to Pages > Add new page

Select the Edit option.

Select the Edit option.

This page just shows the list of hotels by default. So, let’s add a search bar on top of the page. 

To do so, copy and paste the shortcode,” [tf_search_form style=’default’ type=’all’ fullwidth=’true’ classes=”” advanced=’disabled’] “ on to the page. 

copy and paste the shortcode,” [tf_search_form style='default' type='all' fullwidth='true' classes="" advanced='disabled'] “ on to the page

Drag and reposition the search bar shortcode to the top using this icon.

Drag and reposition the search bar shortcode to the top using this icon.

The Travelefic theme comes with a banner image and a sidebar. But we don’t want to show them. So, let’s disable the sidebar and banner by checking the boxes. 

The Travelefic theme comes with a banner image and a sidebar. But we don't want to show them. So, let's disable the sidebar and banner by checking the boxes

Update the page. 

Update the page. 

Congrats! There you have it – Your brand new hotel booking website is ready to flourish. 

How will customers place orders on your hotel booking website? 

The following video gives an idea of how customers will be able to see your hotel booking website and place orders using the Tourfic hotel booking engine. 

Remember, you can always use free payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Amazon Pay, etc., for your hotel booking website. 

How can you manage orders on your hotel booking website?

Now that your customer has placed an order let’s accept the order from the backend. To do so, you can go to the WordPress admin dashboard and then navigate to WooCommerce > Orders

navigate to WooCommerce > Orders.

Select the order you want to process. 

Select the order you want to process

Select ‘Completed’ from the dropdown.

Select ‘Completed’ from the dropdown.

Update the order status. 

Update the order status

That is how you can accept the order and mark it as completed. 

Effective strategies for promoting your hotel booking website

To promote your hotel booking website, you can do the following:

  • Run a blogging section: Write hotel booking tips or share interesting facts on traveling tips on the website blog section to attract more organic visitors. 
  • Run PPC ads: You can run ad paid ads on Google or Facebook to get more outbound visitors. 
  • Collaborate with influencers: You can simply pick up the popular figures, such as celebrities to promote your hotel booking site. 
  • Email marketing and SMS marketing: You can collect the potential customer’s information using lead generation tools and use this data to conduct email marketing or SMS marketing. 
  • Presence on social media: Share news, offers, and blogs on social media (like the Facebook page, Instagram, or Twitter) to keep your audience abreast of your hotel business. 
  • Share customer testimonials: By requesting happy customers, you can get their testimonials in the form of text or video and share them on your website and other channels. 
  • Build backlinks to step up your SEO game: If you can produce awesome content pieces and build a reputation by providing fantastic hospitality service, you’ll automatically get lots of backlinks. However, to get more backlinks, you can collaborate with other related website managers. 
Effective strategies for promoting your hotel booking website

The promotional strategies include but are not limited to the above ones. Meaning you need to keep educating yourself on all the popular inbound and outbound marketing strategies and incorporate them into your strategies over time. 

However, you’ll also need to determine which strategies are more relevant to your business and prioritize them accordingly. 

Hotel booking website examples of taking inspiration from

Now, we have come up with examples of standard hotel booking websites for you. We hope they’ll help you give a thorough idea to make a hotel booking website.

The St. Regis Aspen Hotel website

The St. Regis Aspen Hotel website

The St. Regis Aspen hotel booking website is a great example of creating a hotel booking website. The website is clean and minimalistic, including high-quality images, which are great to look at. Even first-time visitors can navigate effortlessly to get any information.

It has a good user interface for the users to book staying in the hotel rooms, amenities and other factors such as the number of persons who want to stay.

Here are some of the good aspects of the websites we found:

  • Sleek and modern appearance.
  • Contains high quality photos of its amenities and surroundings. 
  • Easy to navigate.
  • Informative – Enriched in content. 
  • User friendly and mobile responsive. 
  • Conversion focused with clear CTAs (Calls to action).
  • Inclusion of a contact number.
  • Maps for navigation. 

So, you can incorporate these effective features into the website development plan if you want to make a hotel booking website that is as effective as The St. Regis Aspen Hotel. 

The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel website

The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel website

The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel website is a great example of a hotel booking website that ties information and style together. 

The website uses very high-quality images and videos to tell how posh and clean they are. They focus on storytelling, such as the history, architecture and the famous guests who visited. 

The overall website layout is extremely user friendly, especially the navigation menu structure is well-organized. It also offers its social media channel links to connect with them.

Here are some of the good aspects of the websites we found:

  • Very well-organized and concise layout for user-friendliness.
  • Very high quality videos, images and texts to attract visitors. 
  • Focus on storytelling.
  • Use of social media to keep abreast of their news, offers and events. 
  • Focus on user experience.
  • A combo of a booking engine and a virtual tour.
  • Mobile responsive and well-versed navigation bar. 
  • Contact information and maps.

If you are looking to build your own hotel booking website, you can take inspiration from the many great aspects of this website.

The Peninsula Beverly Hills website

he Peninsula Beverly Hills website

The Peninsula Beverly Hills website is another excellent example of how a full-fledged hotel booking website should look and act. 

It’s basically a multi-vendor hotel booking website where users can book multiple owners’ hotels from the same website. 

The website does not confuse new visitors with too many options. Rather focuses on the booking calendar and booking engine instead. 

Here are some of the good aspects of the websites we found:

  • Subscription option. 
  • Multiple hotel listings with the details like maps. 
  • Mobile responsiveness.
  • Distraction free and short navigation bar. 
  • Use of great quality photos. 

However, we believe that the site still needs a few improvements, like adding a testimonial section, a review and rating section and a multilingual functionality for people with different languages. 

If you plan to create a multivendor hotel booking website, you can take inspiration from this real-life website. 

FAQs on how to create a hotel booking website

How much does it cost to create a hotel booking website?

The cost of creating a hotel booking website will vary depending on the size and complexity of your website, as well as the hotel booking software platform that you choose.
However, you can expect to pay anywhere from $70 to $150 to create a basic hotel booking website using WordPress. 

How can I track the performance of my hotel booking website?

Tourfic comes with an order management system. Plus, you’ll be able to see the performance of your business easily from the report section of WooCommerce. You can also connect your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console to get more information on user data, user behavior and site performance. 

What are the different types of payment systems that I can use on my hotel booking website?

You can use any type of WooCommerce payment system like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, AliPay, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Braintree, PayPal Pro, Skrill etc., along with offline transfer systems like cash on delivery, bank transfers and check payments. 

How can I optimize my hotel booking website for search engines?

The best way to optimize your hotel booking website for Search
Engines are to use an SEO plugin like Yoast, All in One SEO or RankMath. For SEO, it’s wise to follow the industry experts’ tips too. 

How can I make my hotel booking website faster?

There are a number of ways to do that. First, choose reliable hosting. Second, use a caching plugin. Third, compress images and videos to make the page loading faster. Fourth, use the minified version of JS, CSS and other files. Fifth, eliminate render-blocking assets by placing them at the bottom of the code snippets.

Wrapping up on how to create a hotel booking website

By creating a user-friendly and attractive website, you will certainly be able to make a difference in the hospitality industry. Upon proper search engine optimizations, you can gain significant organic traction in terms of getting visitors and sales. 

We hope this foolproof guide will walk you through setting up your compelling and cost-effective hotel booking website that will help your hotel business skyrocket in the best way possible. 

We suggest you start with the bare minimum and then scale your website later with premium features. However, if you get stuck with any step, let us know in the comment section. Someone from our team will definitely get back to you with a helping hand. 

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