So, you’re thinking of using WordPress as your content management system (CMS) to build your holiday rental website and start generating direct bookings. You will face the crucial task of choosing the best holiday rental WordPress theme for your business. With over 30,000 WordPress themes available, including dozens specifically designed for holiday rental accommodations, the decision can be overwhelming. It’s essential to find a theme that not only looks appealing but also offers features that enhance user experience, support your marketing efforts, and streamline your business operations.
So, which holiday rental WordPress theme is best for your business? We’re here to help you decide. Our research has been thorough, focusing on features, user documentation, and customer reviews. As a result, we’re excited to present to you a curated selection of the best WordPress themes for your holiday let business. Additionally, we’ve provided valuable tips on the steps you should take when working with a holiday rental WordPress theme.
By the end of this guide, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge to make the right choice.
WordPress Theme vs. Website Template
In WordPress, ‘theme’ and ‘template’ are often confused, but they serve distinct purposes.
A theme is a complete design framework that includes tools, layouts, widgets, and styling options to customise your site’s appearance and functionality. When you install a theme, it often comes with pre-built pages or layouts, which are referred to as templates.
Templates are specific page designs within a theme that act as starting points. They make it easy to add your own content and media, ensuring your site reflects your vision while maintaining a professional look.
Understanding the difference is essential for effectively building and managing a WordPress site.
Why use WordPress for your holiday rental business?
If you prefer a theme with ready-to-use templates, WordPress is a standout choice. Powering 45.8% of all websites, its widespread adoption ensures compatibility with most tech platforms, offering an edge over lesser-known CMS options. This popularity also drives innovation, as developers compete to provide efficient plugins and themes, enhancing the overall user experience.
Benefits of WordPress for Holiday Rental Websites:
- User-Friendly Interface
WordPress is intuitive, especially when paired with builders like Elementor, enabling users of all skill levels to manage websites easily. Tutorials make it accessible even for beginners. - Customisable Themes
With over 20,000 themes, including many designed for accommodation businesses, WordPress offers pre-built designs, interactive widgets, and essential features for holiday rental websites. - Integrated Booking Tools
Themes often include reservation and payment systems, live availability calendars, and dynamic pricing—key for streamlining user bookings and business operations. - SEO-Friendly
WordPress provides control over critical SEO elements, such as site hierarchy and URL structure. Paired with the right plugins, it boosts your site’s visibility, making properties easier to find online. - Responsive Design
With mobile devices accounting for over half of all web traffic, responsive design is non-negotiable. WordPress themes ensure adaptability across devices, further enhanced by plugins like Elementor. - Cost-Effective
WordPress itself is free, while premium themes average around £45. These offer advanced features and support, delivering excellent value for money. - Seamless Integration
The prevalence of WordPress means most service providers support integrations for payments, bookings, and analytics.
Where do I find holiday rental WordPress themes I can use?
Finding the perfect holiday rental WordPress theme is easier than you might think. A quick search on Google using terms like “WordPress themes” or “WordPress themes for holiday rentals” will yield a variety of websites offering extensive lists of themes.
However, we personally recommend using ThemeForest, a part of the Envato Market. At Smooth Rentals, we rely on ThemeForest for all our theme purchases and have consistently had positive experiences. Their customer service is excellent, and the platform is user-friendly, offering a wide selection of high-quality WordPress themes.
Here’s how you can get started:
- Visit ThemeForest: Go to ThemeForest.
- Search for Themes: Use the search bar to type in keywords such as “holiday rental WordPress theme” or “vacation rental WordPress theme.”
- Explore Options: Browse through the themes, paying attention to features, ratings, and reviews.
- Preview and Purchase: Preview the themes to see how they look and function. Once you find the one that meets your needs, proceed with the purchase.
What should you look for in a Holiday Rental WordPress theme + the theme provider?
What to Look for in a Holiday Rental WordPress Theme
Beyond standard features like responsive design and SEO, holiday rental websites require specific considerations. This guide highlights essential aspects of selecting a WordPress theme and provider to ensure your website meets operational needs.
1. Check Reviews, Including 1-Star Reviews
Don’t rely solely on high ratings. Low-star reviews often highlight recurring issues, such as poor customer support. Look for recent feedback, as improvements might have been made. Be cautious of themes with many generic 5-star reviews, as studies suggest 30–40% of online reviews may be fake.
2. Documentation Quality
Comprehensive documentation simplifies setup and customisation. A good theme provider should offer detailed guides covering everything from installation to advanced features. Reviews can reveal whether the documentation is sufficient or frustratingly sparse.
3. Customer Support
Even with strong documentation, responsive customer support is crucial. Key factors to evaluate include:
- Response Time: Replies within 24 hours on weekdays are ideal.
- Technical Expertise: Answers should be accurate and actionable, without requiring multiple escalations.
Reviews praising prompt and effective support are a strong indicator of reliability.
4. Customisation Options
Themes should allow significant customisation without requiring advanced coding skills. While not every unique feature can be pre-built, most visible elements should be adjustable through the dashboard or page builder. Reviews can help gauge the extent of available customisation.
5. Key Features for Holiday Rental Websites
Ensure the theme supports essential functionalities:
- Booking System: Whether integrated or compatible with third-party tools like Hostfully, the theme should facilitate seamless reservations.
- Payment Gateway: For direct bookings, verify compatibility with platforms like PayPal, Stripe, or WooCommerce Payments.
- Website Builder Compatibility: If you plan to use Elementor or WPBakery, ensure the theme is fully compatible to avoid issues.
For any doubts, contact the theme provider to confirm critical features.
The Best Holiday Rental WordPress Themes In 2024
We haven’t merely stumbled upon a random selection of WordPress themes tailored for holiday rentals and presented them to you. Instead, we have employed the very guidelines we’ve advocated earlier. We’ve meticulously evaluated aspects such as booking systems, reviews, third-party integration capabilities, compatibility with website builders, and more. Nonetheless, these assessments are rooted in our research, and the themes listed below might not encompass the distinct features you seek. Therefore, we strongly recommend adhering to our earlier advice in order to pinpoint the ideal theme for your holiday rental website.
1. Bellevue Theme
The Bellevue Theme is a versatile WordPress theme tailored for hotels and vacation rentals. It integrates a premium booking system and supports major platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com. This theme stands out with its WooCommerce compatibility, customisable design options via Elementor, and a variety of pre-designed templates suitable for various accommodation types. Bellevue is user-friendly, offering fast setup and multilingual support, making it a robust choice for creating professional, responsive accommodation holiday rental websites.
Cost: $60 + VAT
WordPress theme’s key highlights:
- Bellevue offers a high PageSpeed score and over $940 worth of freebies.
- It includes 16 real-life demos for different property types like hotels, resorts, and single or multiple properties.
- The theme features a premium booking system that syncs with platforms like Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com, and integrates with WooCommerce for payments.
- Bellevue provides a real-time search availability form, supports an unlimited number of accommodations, and offers confirmation modes, discount coupons, and email notifications.
- The theme includes a mobile app for managing bookings on the go.
- Bellevue offers 400 templates, 300 design blocks, 70 Elementor widgets, and customisation options for headers, footers, rooms, and accommodations.
- The theme is translation ready, supports integration with third-party WordPress plugins, and allows for the import of live demo pages or blocks instantly.
- Bellevue also provides a fully integrated online shop, multiple payment gateway options, and customer account features
2. WP Rentals
WP Rentals is a WordPress theme specifically crafted for rental services, including property. It combines a modern, intuitive design with extensive customisation through Elementor widgets and a responsive layout. Key features include WooCommerce integration for smooth payment processing, booking forms, and WPML compatibility for multilingual support. With 10,000 buyers and a very high review rate, with minimal negative reviews, it is definitely a preferred WordPress theme for holiday rentals.
Cost: $69 + VAT
WordPress theme’s key highlights:
- Modern design with customisable demos and Elementor compatibility.
- Mobile-friendly, responsive, and Retina ready for all devices.
- Offers virtual tours on property pages.
- Flexible booking options with built-in caching and multi-currency support.
- Efficient customer support with quick response times.
- Features instant booking and deposit payments.
- Allows setting custom prices for specific dates and longer stays.
- Unique extra booking options for added flexibility in pricing.
- Supports setting specific check-in and check-out days.
3. CozyStay
CozyStay is a sleek WordPress theme tailored for hotel and vacation rental bookings, featuring an intuitive room booking system, customisable layouts with Elementor, and WooCommerce integration for easy payment processing. Optimised for responsive design, it supports multilingual content, making it ideal for modern, user-friendly hotel and rental websites. It is a fairly new theme, but so far based on reviews, it does look like a promising up-and-comer.
Cost: $69 + VAT
WordPress theme’s key highlights:
- A trendy design complemented by an easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder – Elementor.
- It offers 5 complete pre-made demo sites catering to different types of hotels and a large collection of templates and design elements.
- The theme is equipped with a comprehensive room management and reservation system, including room amenities, price, and availability management.
- CozyStay allows for customisable room search, extra services management, and 6 different room list layouts.
- It supports flexible payment gateways with WooCommerce and boasts cross-browser compatibility.
- The theme is responsive, ensuring a beautiful display on any device, and allows for customisation with an instant preview, including colour and typography changes.
- CozyStay also offers a light and dark colour scheme and is designed to be SEO-friendly, supporting various popular plugins and multilingual websites
4. Homey
Homey is a specialised WordPress theme for booking and rentals, distinguished by its sophisticated management system for properties and reservations, including front-end submissions and tracking reservation requests. It offers a customisable booking system with instant booking capabilities, a responsive booking calendar, and advanced search filters. Homey stands out with its pricing and fees management system, allowing detailed control over various pricing strategies, integrated with popular payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
Cost: $69 + VAT
WordPress theme’s key highlights:
- Features a customisable booking system with instant booking and a responsive calendar.
- Includes advanced search filters and a user-friendly search composer.
- Offers comprehensive listing management tools with front-end submissions and reservation tracking.
- Provides flexible pricing and fee management, along with integrated payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
- Boasts a responsive, mobile-friendly design that’s retina ready.
- Highly customisable with drag-and-drop Visual Composer modules.
- Backed by reliable customer support for assistance and queries
Free WordPress Themes For Holiday Rentals – Be Cautious
Free WordPress themes can seem attractive at first, but they often come with limitations. While you can download and install these themes without paying, you might soon encounter the following challenges:
- Many free themes hook you in with basic functionality, but important features, templates, and dashboard tools are typically locked behind a paid “pro” package. This means to fully utilise the theme, you’ll likely need to upgrade.
- Customer and technical support are often only available with the pro version of the theme. If you face any issues, you may find yourself without the necessary assistance unless you opt for the paid upgrade.
What begins as a free option often ends up costing you money. This isn’t a criticism of theme providers—they can’t offer a completely free theme with comprehensive support, regular updates, and enhancements to prevent security risks and improve functionality. They need to charge fees in order to provide a reputable, well-supported, quality theme.
Our professional advice is to avoid relying on themes that are entirely free. For a relatively small investment of £30-£60, you can secure a theme that ensures the safety, functionality, and support needed for a successful holiday rental website.
Conclusion
This guide has provided tips to help you choose the best WordPress theme for your holiday rental website. While we’ve suggested key considerations, your final decision should reflect your specific needs. If you’re unsure where to start or need help building your site, our team is here to assist—feel free to reach out.
Remember, a website’s visual appeal is only one factor in attracting quality traffic and generating bookings. Research competitors’ websites to see how they structure content and design their pages. Identify what works well and apply these insights to enhance your own site’s performance.
We wish you success in selecting the perfect theme, developing your site, and securing direct bookings. With the right tools and strategies, your holiday rental website can flourish and drive your business forward.
