How to Make a Vacation Rental Website in 2024 | Replit

This guide is for vacation rental owners who want to build a direct booking website and escape high platform fees. It assumes you have a modest budget and some comfort with online tools, but no coding background. If you manage a large property portfolio, you may want to hire an agency instead. We will cover everything from site structure and design to domain setup, hosting, and testing. You will also get a look at the main tools to help you create a professional online presence for your property.

Step 1: Plan Your Site Structure and Gather Content

Before you build, map out your website's purpose. A clear plan saves time and ensures your site converts visitors into guests. This phase is about strategy, not software.

First, identify the top actions for visitors. For a vacation rental, these are likely “Check Availability,” “View Photos,” and “Book Now.” These actions define your most important pages and guide your site's layout. Keep your main navigation simple and focused on these goals.

Sketch your site map. Most rental sites need a Homepage, a detailed Property page, a Photo Gallery, and a Contact page. You might add a page for local attractions. Limit your main menu to seven items to avoid overwhelming potential guests.

Use a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox to organize all content in one place. This makes the building process smoother. Create subfolders for photos, text, and legal documents so everything is easy to find.

• Brand Materials: Your logo and official brand color codes.
• Photography: High-resolution images of every room, the exterior, and key amenities. Professional photos are a worthwhile investment that directly impacts bookings.
• Written Content: Property descriptions, your host bio, FAQs, and house rules. Also include any required legal text, like local permit information or tax disclosures.
• Credentials: Logins for any tools you will connect, such as a booking engine or social media accounts.

A common mistake is to omit a clear cancellation policy. This creates uncertainty for guests and leads to abandoned bookings. Instead, write your policy in plain language and place it where visitors can easily find it before they book, such as in an FAQ section.

Step 2: Choose Your Design Approach

Your website's design builds or breaks trust with potential guests. You have several paths to a professional look. For most rental owners, a premium template is the best start. It provides a polished design without the high cost of custom work.

Templates offer a fast, affordable path to a great-looking site. Marketplaces like ThemeForest offer designs for hotels or rentals, which often include photo galleries and booking form layouts. A common mistake is choosing a template with heavy animations. This slows your site and can frustrate visitors, which may cost you a booking. Instead, select a clean, mobile-responsive design that loads quickly.

For more control, consider a UI kit from resources like Tailwind UI. These provide pre-built components like navigation bars and footers that you assemble into pages. This approach requires some technical comfort but offers more freedom. It lets you build custom layouts for unique property features or local attraction guides that a rigid template might not support well.

For a unique brand, you can hire a designer to create mockups in tools such as Figma. This is the most expensive option, often starting at $2,000, and adds weeks to your timeline. You approve the full visual design before development begins. This path suits owners with a large property portfolio or a luxury rental where a distinct brand identity is a key selling point.

Establish a Simple Style Guide

Whichever path you choose, create a style guide first. This document ensures your site looks professional and consistent. A guest who sees mismatched fonts may question the attention you give your property.

• Colors: Pick one primary brand color, one secondary accent, and a neutral. Document the exact hex codes.
• Typography: Choose two fonts maximum. Google Fonts offers many free, web-optimized options.
• Spacing: Use consistent spacing for margins and padding to create a balanced, uncluttered feel.
• Button Styles: Define styles for primary buttons (like “Book Now”) and secondary buttons to guide users.

Step 3: Set Up Hosting and Your Domain

Your domain is your website's address, while hosting is the land it sits on. Both need careful selection to build a reliable online presence for your rental and secure direct bookings.

Choose a Memorable Domain

Select a short, memorable domain like “TheLakeviewCabin.com” and register it with a provider like Namecheap. A common mistake is letting your domain expire, which shuts down your booking site. Enable auto-renewal immediately and add WHOIS privacy to protect your personal information.

Select Your Hosting Plan

For most vacation rental owners, platform-bundled hosting is the simplest path. Builders like Squarespace or Wix include hosting with their plans. This approach simplifies billing and maintenance, so you can focus on guests, not server updates.

If you prefer WordPress for its custom booking plugins, managed hosting from providers like Kinsta is a strong choice. They handle security and backups. Shared hosting is cheaper but can be slow during peak booking seasons, which may cost you reservations.

• SSL Certificate: This encrypts data and shows a lock icon in browsers. It builds trust with guests who enter payment details, and most hosts offer it for free.
• Automatic Backups: Daily backups are your safety net. If an update breaks your availability calendar, you can restore a working version of your site quickly.
• Uptime Guarantee: A 99.9% uptime guarantee ensures your site is online to accept bookings from travelers in any time zone.

After you purchase both, connect them. You point your domain to your host when you update nameserver settings in your registrar account. The change can take up to 48 hours to go live worldwide.

Step 4: Build Your Site With Replit

Instead of a drag-and-drop builder, you can direct an AI to construct your site. Tools like Replit use an AI agent that interprets plain-language commands to write code, set up databases, and deploy a complete website. This gives you custom functionality without needing to be a developer.

You instruct the Replit Agent with a detailed prompt. For example, "Build a site for 'The Aspen Chalet' with a photo gallery, a real-time availability calendar, and a booking form that uses Stripe for payments." The agent builds and tests the entire application for you.

Key Features for Rental Owners

• Custom Booking Engine: Describe the exact booking flow you want, and the agent builds the backend logic and database to manage reservations and guest data automatically.
• Payment Integration: Connect to payment processors like Stripe with a simple request. You can then securely accept credit card payments for direct bookings on your site.
• Dynamic Content: Easily add features that templates struggle with, like a dynamic map of local attractions or a blog to share updates about your property and area.
• Instant Deployment: Your website goes live on a Replit subdomain as soon as it's built. You can connect your custom domain from Step 3 through the project settings.

A common mistake is to give the AI vague prompts like “make a rental website.” This results in a generic site that lacks the specific features needed to secure bookings, such as a clear pricing table or seasonal rate adjustments. Instead, provide detailed instructions for every page and function.

Step 5: Integrate Key Services

Your website connects to services that handle specific functions better than you could build yourself. Set up accounts for these integrations before you need them, then connect them to your site to manage bookings, payments, and guest communication.

Manage Bookings and Payments

Your booking engine is the heart of your site. For payments, integrate a trusted processor. Options like Stripe are popular for reliability, while PayPal offers brand recognition that builds guest confidence. These services handle credit card transactions securely.

A common mistake is failing to test the full payment process. This causes lost bookings when a guest's payment fails. Instead, run a real transaction to confirm payments are processed and notifications are sent correctly before you launch.

Add Guest Communication Tools

Use forms for more than just contact inquiries. Embed a form from a service like Tally or Jotform to collect pre-arrival information, such as guest names or flight details. This automates data collection and makes check-in smoother.

To build an email list for repeat guests, add a signup form. Platforms like Mailchimp or ConvertKit let you send newsletters with special offers. Place the form in your website’s footer for easy access.

Track Your Website's Performance

Install analytics on day one. A tool like Google Analytics 4 shows how visitors find your site and which pages they view most. This data helps you understand what marketing efforts drive traffic and which property features attract interest.

Privacy-focused alternatives include Plausible and Fathom. At a minimum, track total visitors and traffic sources to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy and website content.

Step 6: Build Your Core Pages

With your design and platform ready, you can now construct your website. Work through your site map page by page, starting with those that most directly lead to a booking. Every page needs a clear purpose that guides the visitor toward a single action, like checking your availability.

Your homepage acts as a welcome mat and a guide. It should feature a compelling headline, a stunning hero image of your property, and a prominent “Book Now” or “Check Availability” button. Weave in snippets from positive guest reviews to build immediate trust with new visitors.

Key Pages to Include

• Property Details: This page sells the experience and must be comprehensive. Showcase your rental with a full photo gallery, a detailed list of amenities from the Wi-Fi speed to the coffee maker model, and transparent, seasonal pricing. Embed your booking calendar here.
• About Us: Tell your story as a host. A short bio that explains why you love your property and community helps you connect with guests on a personal level. This human touch can be a powerful differentiator from faceless corporate listings.
• Contact & FAQ: Create a simple contact form and a page that answers common questions. Address topics like check-in procedures, house rules, and your cancellation policy. This saves you time and helps guests make confident decisions before they book.

A common mistake is to use generic stock photos of the local area. This makes your property seem interchangeable and untrustworthy, which can deter potential guests. Instead, invest in professional photos of your actual rental and its unique views to build confidence and justify your rates.

Finally, create your legal pages. Use a service like Termly or Iubenda to generate a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. To show compliance and build further trust, display any required local permit numbers or tax disclosures in your website’s footer.

Step 7: Test Across Devices and Get Real User Feedback

Testing reveals problems invisible during development. Budget time for this step, as a rushed launch with broken features damages credibility and can cost you direct bookings you cannot easily recover. Your goal is to find issues before your potential guests do.

Test on All Devices and Browsers

Your site must work flawlessly for travelers on any device. Check it on iPhones, Android phones, and tablets in both portrait and landscape modes. Use services like BrowserStack to test on real devices you do not own, ensuring your photo gallery and booking forms are always usable.

A common mistake is to only test on your own new computer. This causes lost bookings when a guest on an older phone finds a broken payment button. Instead, test on multiple devices and browsers to catch issues before your visitors do.

Verify Core Functions and Performance

Go through your site as a potential guest would. Click every link, submit every form, and test interactive elements like photo galleries. Most importantly, complete a full booking with a real payment to ensure the entire process is smooth from start to finish.

Use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s load time. A slow site frustrates visitors and can cause them to abandon their booking. Also, run an accessibility check with a tool like WAVE to ensure your site is usable by people with disabilities.

Get Real User Feedback

Automated tools miss what actual humans catch. Ask a few friends unfamiliar with your site to complete specific tasks, such as "Find the cancellation policy" or "Book a weekend in May." Watch them without helping to see where they struggle or get confused.

Step 8: Launch Your Site and Establish Ongoing Maintenance

Your launch is not the finish line. It marks the start of the real work. A proper launch maximizes visibility from day one, and a consistent maintenance plan keeps your direct booking website effective for the long term, securing future reservations.

Pre-Launch Checklist

Before you go live, perform a final review to catch any errors. A broken link or incorrect phone number can cost you a booking. Go through every page to confirm these details are correct and that your site functions as expected.

• Content: All placeholder text is replaced, and contact information is accurate.
• Functionality: External links work, and forms send to a monitored email inbox.
• Bookings: Your booking calendar shows correct availability and seasonal rates.
• SEO: Meta titles and descriptions are set for each page to look good in search results.
• Security: Your SSL certificate is active, so the site uses HTTPS to protect guest data.

Announce your new site across your social media channels and through your email list. Update your website URL on your Google Business Profile listing to help local searchers find you. This ensures a coordinated push to drive initial traffic.

A common mistake is to launch a new site without redirecting old URLs. This breaks links from travel blogs or past guests, which hurts your search ranking and sends potential bookers to a dead page. Instead, map all old links to their new pages.

Scheduled Maintenance Plan

Websites require regular care to perform well. Create a schedule to check key functions and update content. This proactive approach prevents issues like a broken booking form during your peak season. Set calendar reminders for these recurring tasks.

• Weekly: Test your booking and contact forms to ensure they work.
• Monthly: Use a tool like Dead Link Checker to find and fix broken links. Review analytics from a service like Google Analytics 4 to see where your traffic comes from.
• Quarterly: Review all pages for outdated information and refresh photos to reflect the current season.

Submit your sitemap file to Google Search Console to help it index your pages faster. Also, use a free service like UptimeRobot to monitor your site. It will alert you if your site goes down, so you can fix it before you lose bookings.

Want a shortcut?

For a faster path, Replit offers an AI agent that builds your site from plain-language instructions. Instead of manual setup, you describe your needs, like “Create a site for The Lakeview Cabin with a booking calendar and Stripe payments.” The agent writes the code, sets up the database, and deploys the site for you.

This approach gives you a custom booking engine and dynamic features that templates cannot easily support. The agent even tests its own work to fix bugs automatically. You get the power of custom code without the high cost of a developer. You can start to build your vacation rental website on Replit for free.