So, are you looking forward to create a travel booking site with WordPress for your online travel business?
Vacation with a perfect plan can bring peace and relaxation to the mind. Now, it became almost a basic need for everyone with the increase of working pressure.
For most of the customers, a vacation plan starts in front of their computer by seeing online trip packages and purchasing them in the end. So, it’s important to create a perfect travel booking site if you are planning to start your own travel tourism business.
In this article, you will get to know what you should include for creating a travel booking site like Booking.com, TripAdvisor or Airbnb. Also, what are the steps of creating a great travel booking site that not only brings success to your business but also creates a great travelling experience in your customer’s mind that you can even imagine?
What you must include in your travel booking Website?
It can vary from company to company. The including information in your travel booking site will be different according to the type of your site. It will be different if you want to create a small travel booking site rather than creating an international travel agency.
For creating a travel booking site where your customers can easily find their desired packages in less time and less effort, you need to include information in your site in the right way. The basic features of creating a travel agency for both small travel sites and international travel agencies are more or less similar. You need to include some essential information if want to make any kind of travel booking site.
There are some important features that every travel booking company’s website must include:
Your company’s story should be presented
Your company’s story keeps the first impression on your customer. It influences them to buy your package.
In your company’s story, you need to include the reasons for the existence of your company. Tell your customers why you are doing this business and how you came here. Tell them a real story other than making a fancy story. A real story can make a powerful impact on someone’s mind that fancy story. Your clients want to learn the real cause from you.
If your visitors like your story, then they go for a further purchasing process. That’s why you should present your story in the right way that will influence your customers to buy packages from you.
Showcase your company’s trip packages
After presenting your story, you need to provide tour packages to your customer. Your customer will never buy your package until they like your package. You have to tell your customers why you are different from other travel booking sites. What advantages you are giving to your clients that other sites are failed to give. The visitors of your site will not buy your packages if you don’t offer them something different from others.
So, you should offer attractive tour packages to beat your competitors. Offer packages that your clients are looking for.
Provide online booking and reservation facilities
After presenting your packages on your site, you need to facilitate your customers through online booking and reservation. This online booking facility not only increases your customers but also make them lifetime customers who want to receive your service after having one great travel experience.
Now, people are more likely to do everything online. If you don’t include this facility on your site, your business will never see the light of success.
You need to include the facility to learn your tour packages online, then book and reserve the packages they like.
Provide online payment facility
Include an online payment system on your website because now maximum purchases are done through an online payment. This makes the work of customers easier.
Your customer will never book any package until you provide online payment facilities. You can use WP travel plugin for online payment. As they provide different payment facilities for different countries that will make your clients travelling experience more comfortable and joyful.
Include your company’s information on your site
You need to include your contact number and map by that customers can contact you if they face any kind of problem during or after purchasing your packages.
If your customer doesn’t get any information from where you are providing your services. Then it will be hard for your customers to believe you as they don’t get any help if they will face any kind of problem.
So, it’s important to include your contact number and map to your travel booking site. Present your company’s information in a way that your customers can easily find your company’s information on your travel site.
Include customer feedback
Feedback is something that is important for any kind of business weather you are running a food business or travel agency business. It can bring the trust in your client mind. You should present feedbacks of your customers in a way that will be more appealing to your customers.
every customer checks feedback before purchasing any product or packages. It creates a huge influence on your customers. Positive feedback can increase your customers in a way that you can never imagine. So, try to highlight the feedbacks of your customers in an attractive way.
By including all these functions on your site, you can create a travel booking site with WordPress like Airbnb.
Steps to create a travel booking site with WordPress
If you want to create a travel booking site with WordPress like Airbnb then you need to create a website in the right way. It is similar for both if you want to create a small travel business or want to operate an international travel site like Airbnb. Steps to create a travel booking site are:
1. Select the most suitable platform for your website
Suitable platform selection for your site is one of the most important tasks. WordPress.org will be a great choice for you. If you want to make your self-hosted website then you need to go for WordPress.org. You can use this for free. It is free but It provides unlimited features that hardly any premium paid content management system can provide you. WordPress.org is the number one most popular content management system now.
WordPress.org can provide you various unique features that no other platforms can provide. WordPress is the number one most used content management system till now and its user continuously increasing in an unbelievable way. WordPress.org is 100% user-friendly that’s why you don’t need to worry about it if you are a beginner.
39% of all websites on the web are running with WordPress.
Why choose WordPress as your website platform
- No need to waste money by hiring a developer for your site. It can save you money and energy as it is beginner-friendly.
- Don’t need to be an IT engineer for making your travel booking site. As you will need no or little coding knowledge for using it.
- Control your data and will provide you with security with lots of WordPress security plugins.
- Easily create your travel booking site with WordPress plugins and these plugins will help you to add functionality to your site without having any coding knowledge. like for security you have to install security plugins, for adding widgets you can install widget plugins.
- You can change the appearance of your site by creating a travel booking site with WordPress themes. These themes are free to use.
- It will make your site mobile responsive and SEO-friendly. Your site optimizes according to the screen size of your users.
- WordPress will provide you with free translation and easy management facility of your data.
- It will provide you with help if you face any difficulty.
- You will have full access to your data and files. It provides access that even paid content management system can’t provide.
- WordPress.org provides unlimited hosting storage to its client.
WordPress comes with WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.org is free for its user. WordPress.com is the paid version. But it will be wiser to use their unpaid version. As WordPress.org is more accessible and featureful than paid one. If you will get confused about which one you should use then you can check the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
For these facilities, you should choose WordPress over any other platforms. If you create a travel booking site using HTML then creating a website will be more difficult. Other platforms can save your money initially. But it can never provide you with the facilities as WordPress.
2. Get your domain name
In this step, you need to select your domain name. A perfect domain name will help you to gain success in your business. It is preferable to keep your domain name in the name of the company name.
If you haven’t started your company yet then choosing a good company name that will resemble your business will be essential. If you want to create a travel booking site with a WordPress domain then you need to select a perfect domain name for your site.
A great company name will lead you to a great domain name. While choosing a company name you should keep in mind that:
It should be short and easy to remember
You need to avoid long and hard names. Because it will create difficulty during use and memorization. People always avoid hard and long names. Keeping your company’s name short and easy will help you to increase your customer. Day by day people are getting busier in their professional and personal life that’s why they always want everything in less time.
So, make your company’s name short and specific by that your customers can get to you in less time and effort.
Your company’s name should resemble your business
Keep your company’s name similar to the product or service you provide. By doing this your company name helps your customer to know what service you provide. If you keep a completely different domain name then it will be hard for your clients to get an idea that what service you provide.
You need to keep a domain name by that your clients can easily find out the service you provide.
Don’t include hyphens and numbers in your company name
Always avoid hyphens and numbers because it will create confusion among your customers. People will always get confused by this. If your customer forgets or gets confused by your domain name then they can’t reach you and buy service from you. That’s why it will not be wise to use hyphens and numbers in your company’s name.
Remember: A great company name can help you to grow your business.
3. Get your hosting service from the good hosting company
You need to get a hosting service from the good hosting companies after selecting your domain name. there are many hosting companies like Bluehost, Hostgator, Hostinger, etc. From them, you can purchase your self-hosting service.
It means that you can have full control over your website. Can customize your website the way you like.
You can install your WordPress with only one click after that it will automatically get installed.
4. Install suitable theme for your website
Your website Appearance will be the very first impression to your visitors. So, it needs to be more appealing to your visitors. You can change your travel booking site’s appearance by these themes.
WordPress will provide you default theme with the installation but it will not be that appealing to your visitors. If you want to create a travel booking site with a WordPress theme then, you need to install and activate a suitable theme for your site.
Before selecting a theme you need to keep one thing in mind that your theme should suit well to your business.
For installing the theme go to your admin dashboard. Then go appearance>> themes.
After that click the add new. Then search for the theme that you want to install and activate it.
We are installing Travel Ultimate Theme to create a travel booking site with WordPress. By using the Travel Ultimate theme you can change the appearance of your site completely. It’s a new theme but it can provide excellent service to its user. This continuously upgrades according to its user demand. Right now its active installation is 1000+. It is a great result for a newly launched theme.
After installing activate it.
5. Add functionality by installing plugins
You can create a travel booking website with WordPress plugins that can help you to add functionality to your site without applying difficult coding.
It will make your website more powerful by adding lots of useful plugins.
You can install the WP Travel plugin to add lots of features that a travel booking company needs.
By installing WP Travel, you can add lots of travel and tour packages to your travel booking site. It also helps you to add trips, duration of trips, and cost of trips on your site. you can add discounts to your site with this plugin.
Basically, it will provide you with all features that you will need for your site. You can also install Travel Themes for customizing your travel booking site’s appearance and design.
Travel Ultimate will recommend you some plugins for your site. Click the begin installing plugin option.
Select install in the bulk action then click apply. Then activate this plugins.
After installing and activating the theme and plugins your site will look like this.
After that, you need to customize your site. For that click customize your site.
What’s Next?
After that you need to customize all following area according to your desire:
- Site identity (adding logo, pages, pages name)
- Adding colors
- header Image
- Background image
- Menus
- Widgets
- Homepage settings
- Front Page
- Theme options
- Reset all setting
- Additional CSS
After customizing all these areas your site will look like this.
For changing the functionality of your site or plugin you need to edit the following sections:
- Booking
- Coupons
- Enquires
- Trip extras
- Downloads
- Reports
- Custom filters
- Settings
You have to customize the general setting by making required changes in currency, Maps, pages. Then press the save setting button.
Adding Trips to your site
- All trips: In this option your customers can see all trips that you uploaded.
- New trips: You can add new trips with this option.
- Pricing categories: You can add different prices for different trip categories.
- Trips types; You can add types of trips with this option.
- Destinations: It will allow you to add destinations. On the right site of your site you can see newly added destination.
- Keywords: Allow you to add keywords.
- Activities: You can add new activity through this option.
For more details checkout this documentation.
6. Combine booking and payment
By installing plugins like WP Travel, you can combine booking and booking payments on your site. A booking becomes easier and safer with the help of PayPal and other payments that WP travel provides.
Why you should choose WP Travel to make a travel booking site With WordPress?
WP Travel is the best free wp travel engine by that you can easily make a wonderful travel booking site like Airbnb.
WordPress.org rating to WP travel is 4.7.
Active Installation of WP Travel is 6000+.
Within a short period, wp travel has achieved these remarkable results for providing outstanding services to their users. WP Travel provides lots of attractive themes and powerful plugins for their users. For their themes, you can check 15+ best WordPress travel themes for your site.
Payment Options for Your Travel Site
With wp travel you can add lots of payment system for different counties in your travel booking site. This payment online payment system will ease your client work. You can add following payment modules with your site:
- For international transactions, you can use their WP Paypal Express Checkout, Stripe Checkout, Authorize checkout.
- Payment in India you can use their Instamojo Checkout, Razorpay Checkout.
- Payhere Checkout can be used for Sri Lanka.
- For South Africa Payfast checkout.
- Countries like Columbia, Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Peru PayU Latam can be used.
- and many more can be added.
Through these payment systems, your customers can pay their booking bills online. That will make their traveling easy and comfortable.
Features WP Travel provides your Online Tourism Business
- You can add unlimited trip packages with their prices, sale prices, duration, gallery, and many more.
- Booking your client desired tour package will be easier. Your clients can easily book your packages if you use wp plugins.
- Your clients can easily pay for their package that they want to book. Payment will be easier in different countries by using their payment systems.
- Different dates and prices can be added for one trip.
- You can even add tax with the package prices according to your company policy.
- Clients of yours can rate your service and add their reviews if you allow them to. Reviews in a travel booking site can gain the trust of new customers. When a customer visits a travel booking site he/she firstly search for reviews before booking any package.
- For each trip, you can add a google map. Through it, your clients can easily find the location of their trip.
- You can even add coupons with your trips and many other features can be added with wp plugins.
Their plugins are easy to customize and you can get full support from their service team if you face any problem.
Conclusion:
Congratulations! Now, you know how to create your own travel booking site with WordPress.
Don’t be afraid if you face difficulties with your site. It is normal to face hindrance when you will do something for the first time.
And let us know in the comment section if you fail to do anything.
