A vacation home renter could be anyone from a small business with a vacation house to the manager of several properties or even someone who wants to earn money from his own home while not dwelling in it.
The first step to getting market-ready with your vacation property is to place your offer on all the suitable listing platforms. Next on your agenda should be to draft a marketing strategy for your rental business.
The most critical action to promote your vacation property business is to create a website for it. As most travelers search for their destination online before making decisions it is imperious that you should maintain an online presence.
For a small business, you may leave the booking responsibility to the listing platform and create a presentation site. If you manage more than one property, it is best to create a booking system on your website. In this case, you will be able to handle all the payment details (deposit, refunds) without paying a fee to the listing platform.
What are the steps to make a vacation property rental website?
First things first, you should choose a good domain name that will make you stand out from your competitors. The name of your website and the title of your property don’t necessarily have to coincide. Hence, you might want to make keyword research to come up with an SEO gold website name.
If you have a log cabin near beautiful Lake Martin, think of what people would search: long-tail keywords such as ‘vacation home with a view of Lake Martin’ or ‘lakefront cabin near Lake Martin.’ The best variants for your domain name, in this case, would be LakeMartinCabinRental dot com or VacationHomeLakeMartin dot com.
Pick a website host
You could host your website for free, but this comes with the disadvantage of having to display the host’s ads or logo on your site. To ensure you are free to create your site based on your needs, the best decision is to pay for a hosting provider.
This is especially important if you want to use sophisticated tools such as Bootstrap, JavaScript, MySQL or HTML 5 to extend functionality (booking system). For hosting a website, you’re not paying more than $100-$125 a year, and the benefits exceed costs. We recommend you to check 2 hosting companies tested with our themes: Inmotionhosting and Wp Engine.
Select a website publisher
Most hosting providers offer WordPress compatibility so you can use the most popular publishing option at present. WP is a fast-growing content management system and the website builder of choice for many online businesses.
The best decision is choosing WordPress to create your site while opting for a paid hosting platform. This way you can build a responsive and customized website. With WordPress, you benefit from a remarkable range of themes, plugins and fine-rate support system including podcasts, videos, and PDF library.
Opt for a design theme
WordPress provides a modern design for your website with its dedicated themes. With the vast plethora of features and plugins, it delivers the necessary foundation for a professionally designed website.
By choosing pre-build dedicated themes, creating a website for your vacation rental business becomes a simple process.
We designed WpRental theme with the rental business in mind. Its long-tested functions, numerous options, and SEO boost tools make it super easy for you to build an excellent real-estate website.
Opting for a flexible, fully customizable theme is a great way to make your website stand out in search results.
Build a 5-page website
Make things easy for your visitors and organize your site content in 5 pages instead of letting them browse endlessly for finding what they need.
Each page should have a top menu bar to ensure easy navigation and a minimum 300 words content with relevant information.
For a rental website, the necessary pages would be the following: homepage, property/listing page, owner/about page, blog, contact page and an optional FAQ page.
Wp Rentals allows you to choose between buil-in pages, or create your own with the available features. Check out our demos –
Homepage
The first page to make an impression for your visitors, the homepage should have all the elements to hold interest.
WpRentals offers several layouts with the header media its top element which can be a static image, a slider, a video or google map. There is the option to set your site’s home to be a splash page – your millennials clients will appreciate this.
Another essential feature of the homepage is the search form. In WpRentals we offer two advanced search form designs that can be placed vertical and horizontal.
From admin, you can add unlimited search fields and configure the placement over header media for maximum effect.
Property Page
If you own a single property, the menu tab for this page should include the name of your property (for example: About Lake Martin Rental).
This page highlights the strong points of your property and offers all the useful information for your visitors. To emphasize the benefits of your vacation home add high-quality images and videos. Additionally, you can impress your website users with a virtual tour.
WP Rentals theme comes with two designs for the property page, offering a full header image template or an engaging property slider. Each one is fully customizable and draws attention to the best features of your property.
The sidebar includes contact form and booking form to ensure a simple and efficient reservation process for your visitors.
Check a live demo here – https://main.wprentals.org/properties/2-bedrooms-condo/
Owner Page
If you manage more than one property each with its owner, this page is assigned to the owners’ list.
Alternatively, if you are the sole owner, you can present yourself to your visitors and create a top-rate business profile. An excellent element to add is the customer testimonial section that you can place with a simple shortcode.
Adding positive reviews from happy customers is a great way to enhance confidence in your rental business.
In WpRentals the owner page has a minimalist, up-to-date design, which puts an emphasize the most important info at first view. Your visitors see your smiling photo, a brief but interesting description, the property list (if you own more than one) and the testimonial section.
See here a live example.
Blog
For a rental business, an updated blog is a great way to humanize your business and make a personal connection with your future guests.
Talk about the location, its history, and surroundings to entice curiosity. You can also share news of fun events happening in the area that might help your visitors decide to make a reservation.
Check a live example here – https://main.wprentals.org/blog-list/
The Contact Page
For maximum visibility, your contact details should be placed in the footer of every page of your site. The separate Contact Us page is a great way to write more about you and make people interested in your vacation home.
You can also place a dedicated form to allow visitors to communicate with you.
In WpRentals the communication is swift and smooth, visitors can contact the owner on the property page, and the owner will be notified by email of the new message. Or they can easily reach the site admin via a dedicated contact page.
Contact page template example from Wp Rentals demos – https://santorini.wprentals.org/contact/
FAQ
You could add an optional frequently-asked-questions section to anticipate your guests’ inquiries and offer important info.
It could include answers to questions about the check-in, check-out times, about the vacation home features and amenities, or about the nearby restaurants or gas stations. You should also specify if you allow smoking or pets in your rental property.
Keep your site at a minimum number of pages but with a maximum relevance for your guests and your business will have a top-rate web presence with a great SEO score.
