Showcasing your property online and creating your own vacation rental website has become a necessity in today’s competitive vacation rental marketplace. It helps you as a vacation rental owner or manager brand your vacation rental, build a professional appearance and create a long-term professional strategy for your vacation rental business. There are several ways to create a vacation rental website using generic website builders such as WordPress, Wix or Squarespace.
However, these solutions are not optimized for vacation rentals, and one needs to manually manage property information and reservations. That is why, in our opinion, using vacation rental website templates which focus on the specific needs of rental owners and managers, is a much smarter way to create your personal website and at the same time manage your bookings.
Here are some of the benefits you get when using vacation rental website templates:
1. List your property information
When using vacation rental website templates, you start by simply entering all your property details into a wizard-based input mask and selecting from a list of amenities. Property pages are automatically created, picking the relevant information and key facts that you entered and displaying them on your website. It’s done in just a few minutes and would probably take a couple of hours using generic website builders.
2. Upload your property photos
Upload all your property photos and have them showcased on a dedicated gallery page or slide show. Vacation rental website templates place your photographs on as many relevant pages as possible, since beautiful images of your property will set your site apart from others and play an important role for a guest considering to book your vacation rental. Make sure your images are high quality though, and if not, it’s really worth investing in professional photographs.
3. Show your availabilities
Potential guests want to know when they can or cannot book your vacation rental. That is why vacation rental website templates include a page that show your availabilities in a calendar and make sure they are automatically updated when you accept a new booking. A huge benefit is that your calendar can easily synchronize with the availabilities shown on listings that you may have on external portals. This means that you can centrally manage all your availabilities and do not need to update them separately on each channel.
4. Promote your location
Guest are curious to know how far away you are from the beach, the city center, airport etc. And you may also want to brag about the location of your vacation rental properties. That is why vacation rental websites templates allow you to add a page that indicates the exact position of your properties on a map, and show the distances to relevant points of interest.
5. Collect guest reviews
Collecting positive reviews and displaying them on your guestbook is super important in order to build your reputation as a credible vacation rental owner. When using vacation rental templates, follow-up emails are automatically sent to guests, kindly asking for their review. They can enter a review directly on your page, rating their stay and overall experience – and it’s up to you to accept, reject or comment. The more reviews you publish on your website, the more trustworthy you appear.
6. Accept online payments instantly
Vacation rental website templates from Lodgify offer a booking engine that you can integrate into your pages. The system automatically picks relevant rates which you define, and calculates the costs for guests. You can choose to accept instant bookings, or review the booking and guest details before accepting credit card payments via Paypal or Stripe.
7. Display costs and rates
Configure simple rates (e.g. nightly and weekly) or define more dynamic rates (e.g. seasonal rates, price per person etc.) for your booking system. The rates are displayed in a chart and give your website visitors a detailed overview of costs. You can also list various additional costs and info such as cleaning charges, taxes, minimum stays or last minute discounts.
8. Manage your reservations
Vacation rental website templates allow you to receive all inquiries in a centralized inbox. You can keep track of your bookings to ensure you’re always on top of your reservations. Automated email notifications are sent out to your guests and yourself, and you’ll never make a double booking.
9. Be mobile friendly
Last but not least, your website will be mobile friendly. Lodgify is one of the few services out there that offers responsive vacation rental website templates. “Responsive” means that your website will automatically adjust to the screen or device that is being used to access your website, rearranging content and images accordingly. And it’s become really important as travelers today expect user-friendly and seamless mobile experiences.
So that’s just some of the advantages you have using vacation rental website templates. Why not check it out for yourself? Lodgify offers a free 7-day trial for you to experience all these benefits.
