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“Follow the plan outlined here and you can create your own website from scratch without writing any code for less than $300.”
List vacancies.
Automate booking.
Generate revenues online.
All of these things are 100% within your reach using a well-made website for a hotel. And the truth is, it’s not that hard to make a site like that these days.
With all the advances in technology and user-experience design, there are tools that make even complex websites simple to make.
You can create a website for a hotel that visitors can use to book and pay for their reservations using these tools. Better still, you won’t need to write a line of code or pay for expensive developers.
Excited to get started?
Keep reading to see a sneak peek of the site.
How much does it cost? You may be surprised to find out you can build the whole site for a little over $100.
Site preview
It’s hard to get too excited about the site you’ll be building before you see it.
While there are a few steps required before we get into the design and customization of the site, here’s a quick look at how your site will look:
That’s the Bellevue WordPress theme. It’s a gorgeous theme and includes all the features you need to make a successful hotel website with WordPress. Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to look exactly like the screenshot above.
You can click here to see more of Bellevue including the various other styles and designs.
For now, let’s move on with the steps required to make this site.
How to create a hotel site
With the modern site building tools available, it’s easier than ever to make your own website. Even a complex site like a hotel website with online booking and payment processing can be built without ever touching a line of code.
The five main steps are:
- Pick an excellent domain
- Get hosting for your site
- Choose the best theme
- Customize everything
- Launch!
We’ll be focusing primarily on the tools needed to build your own hotel site in this tutorial. I’ll include some resources for site customization at the end as well, so stay tuned for that.
The first step is to get yourself a domain name.
Pick an excellent domain
The domain name is the address visitors will enter into their browser to visit your site.
I know what you may be thinking…
No one types in website addresses anymore!
And that’s true!
Their browser either remembers the URL for them or they follow a link to your site. But it’s important to have a memorable brand name and your domain name should be the same or extremely similar to that name.
When picking out a domain name, the real challenge isn’t finding a good name, it’s finding an available domain name. We have a detailed guide here you can follow along with to get your domain.
For registering your domain name, I normally recommend using Namecheap.
Namecheap has affordable and fair registration prices and some nice domain management tools. Google Domains is another great alternative.
Once you’ve settled on an available name you like, the next step is to signup for hosting.
Get hosting for your site
Hosting is required for your website to load when someone visits your site.
When it comes to hosting, there are tons of options to choose from. And if I’m being completely honest, there are a lot of good hosts available for new webmasters.
The one that stands out to me for a WordPress newbie is Nexcess.
I recommend Nexcess because there an easy option to use for a beginner or veteran. They also offer excellent performance that can scale with your traffic, so you can continue hosting with them long into the future.
Click here to create an account.
Automatically create your site
Another benefit of choosing Nexcess is that they’ll auto-create your WordPress site for you. Once you finish signing up, you’ll have a complete WP site ready to use.
WordPress has been around for more than ten years and is live on millions of websites around the world. Besides being a stable and mature solution for creating a site, the biggest benefit is the community.
Any time you have a question, you can Google it and find plenty of solutions. In addition, there are literally tens of thousands of themes and plugins for customizing your site.
Speaking of which, let’s get to the fun part already – choosing your theme!
If you’d like more assistance with your site, follow the free video course in my WordPress site building tutorial.
Choose the best theme
Here’s another look at a possible design with the Bellevue theme:
You can see more examples here.
Bellevue can be used for any kind of property rental business. This includes regular hotels, Airbnbs, or even a small bed and breakfast.
It’s been designed to integrate with the awesome Elementor page builder plugin. Use the drag-and-drop visual builder to create entirely custom page layouts.
There are dozens of theme options available in the Customizer where you can watch changes to the logo and colors take place live.
Of course, you’ll need forms to allow visitors to book visits. Belleveue includes a custom version of the popular WP Booking System plugin that you can use to display a visual calendar of any room’s availability. Visitors can choose when they want to stay and complete the entire process online.
Overall, it’s a gorgeous theme and includes all the tools you need to make a fully functional hotel site.
If you want some additional alternatives, there are a few more I would recommend.
Alternative themes
To continue your search for the perfect theme, check out this collection of the best hotel and resort themes for WordPress.
And if you want a few more options, this vacation rental themes list has templates that better cater to small properties.
If there’s a feature or style you’re having trouble finding still, post in the comments section below.
Customize everything
Customizing your site is a pretty straightforward process.
First, follow the steps in this basic WordPress site customization guide. You’ll learn how to set up the settings that come with WordPress as well as a few style options.
Next, you’ll want to get your theme installed and activated. Your theme may have a special demo importer, but otherwise, you can learn how to import theme demo content here.
Our tutorial on page building will teach you how to use Elementor to build custom templates.
The theme you select will have its own set of customization options as well, and they’ll provide you with tutorials for further details.
After you’ve customized your site, there’s just one step left.
Launch
Follow the steps above, and you’ll have a finished hotel website.
Using WordPress and a premium theme, you can have a gorgeous and fully functional hotel site complete with online booking.
To summarize the steps one last time:
- Pick an excellent domain
- Get hosting for your site (Nexcess)
- Choose the best theme (Bellevue)
- Customize everything
- Launch!
If you have any remaining questions about how to make a hotel website, post in the comments section below.
