How to Create a Travel Booking Website with WordPress

About 91% of travelers use search engines ( 81% of them prefer Google) to plan their next trip. So, if you own a travel company and want to be visible to those travelers, you should be ready with your travel booking website. 

With WordPress, you can create a fully functional travel booking website in a flash. It offers you a handful of choices when it comes to design and customization. With a plethora of WordPress themes and plugins to choose from, you can instantly start your website like a pro. 

But is that it?

Definitely not!

Before moving forward to themes and plugins, you should do some groundwork with domain registration and hosting. A good domain name provides immense value to your website and proper hosting makes sure it runs smoothly throughout. 

Having said that, we will guide you through the entire process of how to create a travel booking website with WordPress in this article. Besides, you can find answers to your concerns with our detailed FAQs section. 

Before jumping into the details, let’s begin with the prerequisites of a successful travel booking website. 

Prerequisites of Successful Travel Booking Website

A good travel company website is one that tells a story behind the brand and informs visitors about the travel services that they can get. As a result, before you start a travel booking website, you need to analyze and identify the types of features, functionality, and sections that you must have on your website. 

The professional travel booking website requires the following features:

Company’s Whereabouts

First, you need to make a great first impression as a travel company. Then only you can win over your potential customers. You need to tell a story about how and why your company came into existence in the first place. 

If you connect with your customers and convince them to like your whereabouts, they are more likely to purchase services from you. This way you can grow clients and scale your travel business. 

Display Travel and Tour Packages

As a travel booking website, you need to offer your customers some attractive and competitive travel packages. You should make your services easily accessible to the ones who are looking for them. Similarly, try to show how your services are different from others and what are the advantages of buying these services from you. 

Displaying discounts and other offers on particular tour packages can attract more clients to your travel business. 

Destinations and Booking Page

A destination page with recommended travel locations helps your users to book their next travel service with you. You can even include the name of the city and add an overview of things to explore. Besides, you can add a Google Map that shows the exact location, nearby hotels, and popular activities to do. 

Similarly, your travel website should have a dedicated booking page that shows the details about their travel reservations. It is the place where your customers can securely process their payments for the bookings they make. 

Easy ePayments

The entire payment process should be easy for your customers. You should ensure that you have included a dedicated payment gateway on your travel booking website. Whenever your customers book a service from you, they should be able to pay for the package securely without any risk of cash fraud. 

Travel Tips

Generally, newbie travelers are always looking for a way to prepare for their trips. Adding different travel tips on your website such as what to pack during the tour, when to arrive at the airport, how to keep one’s luggage safe during a trip, etc. can help them boost their morale. 

Social Proof

Displaying pictures of your customers’ traveling can help secure your website’s social proof. Images and visual content entice your hesitant clients to book on your website. Similarly, you can ask your customers to submit their testimonials and reviews about your travel services. Adding positive feedback about your customers on your website helps build trust among your customers. 

5 Steps to Create a Travel Booking Website With WordPress

Here are the 5 easy ways to create a travel booking website using WordPress:

1. Pick Your Domain Name

Before moving forward, you need to pick a suitable domain name for your travel booking website. The domain name refers to your website name. 

Also known as a URL, your domain is your address on the web. The domain name of your website is your identity and it plays an important role because it makes the first impression. 

Consider the following points when choosing the name of your travel booking website:

• The name should be short and appealing.
• It should be easy to remember.
• It should represent what you do as a professional.
• Avoid overusing words and similar brandings such as nomad, adventure, wanderlust, and vagabond. 

You can look for different domain extensions. The price for domain names differs between different domain extensions. Normally, you can find the following domain extensions:

• .com 
• .org 
• .net 
• .co 
• .us 

An online tool like Wordoid can help you pick a good domain name for your travel booking website. It provides you plenty of great options to help you pick the best name for your website. 

Next up, we will talk about registering your domain name and setting up your hosting using Bluehost.

2. Choose Hosting For Your Travel Website

In order to get full ownership and control of your travel booking website, you should have it self-hosted with popular and trusted hosting service providers. 

Web hosting keeps your website online. It is the place where all your files, images, and content get stored. Hosting can be cheap or very expensive depending on your requirements. 

To get started, we recommend you host your travel booking website using Bluehost. You should choose a web hosting server based on the location where you are. For example, if you reside in India, you can use https://www.bluehost.in/. 

Bluehost is best because:

• It offers free registration of a domain for the first year, starting at $3.95 per month. 
• It enables free and easy installation of WordPress.
• It includes a free SSL certificate. 
• It features 24/7 customer support via chat or phone.
• It provides a refund within 30 days.

Here are the easy steps to set up a web hosting using Bluehost:

Go to bluehost.com and click the Get Started button. 

Now, select the plan of your preference. 

If you are new to this, you can select the Basic plan that costs just $2.95 per month, which is applicable for the 36-month package. 

Once you select your hosting plan, enter your travel website’s domain name(if you already have else add new domain name) and then click the Next button to continue. 

Next up, add your account information and finalize your package to end the hosting and registration process. Select the 36-month plan as it offers the best value. 

Similarly, add a billing address for payment and tick the box to present your agreements to Bluehost’s Terms and Services. Now, click the Submit button. 

You have now successfully set up web hosting for your travel booking website. Now, it’s time to install WordPress on your website.  

3. Install WordPress on Your Travel Website

Next is installing WordPress on your travel website. Installing WordPress on your travel website using Bluehost is a quick and easy process. 

Once you register with Bluehost, you can install WordPress on your website with a click of a button. 

In order to do that, log in to your Bluehost account and click the Advanced section located at the left sidebar. After that, select the WordPress option placed at the Softaculous Apps Installer section. 

Now, click the Install Now button to start the installation process.

After that, you should select your domain name and scroll down to the section where you have to enter your username and password. 

In the next process, fill up the details and click the last install option to install WordPress on your travel booking website. 

Once the installation process is completed, go to http://yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin, and input your admin username and password to access your travel website’s WordPress admin dashboard. 

After you log in to your WordPress admin dashboard, go to Settings > Permalink and modify your permalink structure to Post name. Now, click the Save Changes button to finish the entire process. 

4. Choose the Best Travel Booking WordPress Theme

In order to design a perfect travel booking website, you should pick a proper WordPress theme. WordPress themes allow you to control the visual appearance of your website. 

You can choose from different WordPress themes for travel agencies to create a fully functional travel booking website. Here, we will explain a few of those. 

Some Popular WordPress Themes for Travel Booking Website:

Steps to Install a WordPress Theme

Here, we will demonstrate the entire theme installation process using the Travel Booking Pro theme. 

First, go to https://wptravelengine.com/wordpress-travel-themes/travel-booking-pro/ to download this premium WordPress theme. 

Now, log in to your dashboard and redirect to Appearance > Themes > Add New from the left side panel. 

Once you get redirected to the next screen, click the Upload Theme button placed at the top. 

Now, click the Choose File button to select the zip file of Travel Booking Pro that you downloaded earlier on your pc. 

After you choose the theme zip file, click the Install Now button to install it. 

Once the theme installation process completes, click the Activate button to activate the Travel Booking Pro theme. 

5. Install Travel Plugins for Added Functionality

WordPress plugins help to amplify the performance of your website. Different plugins offer additional functionalities and customization options that are outside the reach of your WordPress theme.

There are many must-have plugins for a travel booking website. Here, we will discuss a few of those. 

Some Popular WordPress plugins for Travel Booking Websites:

i. WP Travel Engine

WP Travel Engine is one of the most important plugins for a travel booking website. This plugin offers you the option to create travel and tour packages for your website. It lets you add a trip, detailed itineraries, trip information, duration, price, cost includes and excludes, FAQs, and much more. 

This premium plugin features a smart booking process where the price gets adjusted automatically based on the number of users selected for booking. It supports different payment options through premium extensions like PayPal, PayU Biz, Stripe, PayFast, Authorized.net, and more. 

Other key features of WP Travel Engine:

• It allows to create destination and activities pages
• It supports an inquiry form
• It enables booking email notification
• It supports extensions like currency converter, trip weather forecast, group discount, and so on.

This plugin is all you need to build SEO-friendly Travel Websites in minutes. You can refer to the below video tutorial, which walks you through the entire plugin features and how you can use it to build a travel website.

ii. RankMath

RankMath is a free WordPress SEO plugin that lets you optimize your travel website for better visibility on search engines. It includes modern-day SEO features including the 100-point page analysis test. Similarly, this theme allows you to optimize for up to 5x target keywords per page for free. 

Moreover, RankMath has a 1x-click advanced SEO analysis tool that assists you to perform a wide audit in a flash. You can also manage meta tags for things like noindex, noarchive, and nofollow. 

Other key features of RankMath:

• Easy setup process
• Simple user interface
• Broken link checker and 404 error monitor
• XML sitemap
• Rich snippets
• Automatic SEO image optimizer
• Google keyword suggestions 

iii. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a useful caching plugin that ensures your travel website runs as fast as possible. It helps to improve the SEO and overall user experience of your website by reducing its load time. W3 Total Cache also leverages features like content delivery network (CDN). 

This WordPress plugin includes advanced caching features like caching compressed pages and posts as well as compressed CSS and Javascript. It also offers you different options for caching methods such as Local Disk, Redis, XCache, Memcached, and so on. 

Other key features of W3 Total Cache:

• Compatible with shared hosting
• Supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
• Supports browser caching using cache-control
• Quick and easy support 

Steps to Install a WordPress Plugin

Here, we will demonstrate the entire plugin installation process using the WP Travel Engine plugin that best suits travel booking websites and is compatible with the Travel Booking Pro theme. 

To begin the process, you need to first download the zip file of the WP Travel Engine plugin. 

You can download the plugin zip file using the link below:

https://wptravelengine.com/downloads/wp-travel-engine/

Now, log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and go to Plugins -> Add New from the left sidebar. 

Once you are redirected to the next screen, click the Upload Plugin button to continue. 

After that, click on the Choose File button to choose the zip file of the WP Travel Engine plugin that you downloaded a while ago. 

Once you pick the file, click the Install Now button to install the plugin on your WordPress. 

After the plugin gets installed, click the Activate Plugin button to complete the process. 

Upon activation, you can see the WP Travel Engine plugin right at the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. 

There you go. You have successfully installed the WP Travel Engine plugin on your WordPress. In the next part, we will demonstrate the use of some important plugin extensions required by a travel booking website. 

6. Integrate Online Bookings, Payments, and Other Important Add-Ons

Now, since you have set up a WordPress theme and plugin on your website, it’s time to add some features to increase the functionality of your travel booking website. 

Here, we will show you the process of adding a few extensions provided by the WP Travel Engine plugin.

i. Authorize.net Payment Gateway

Authorize.net Payment Gateway enables you to accept credit cards directly on your travel website through the Authorize.net account. You just need the Authorize.net API login id and transaction key to use this payment gateway. 

Now, You can either follow the video or the below steps to add this payment extension to your travel booking website:

From the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard, hover over to the WP Travel Engine plugin and click on Extensions to find the payment gateway extension for your website. 

After that, click the Get the Extension button placed right below the Authorize.net Payment Gateway. 

Once you click it, you will get redirected to the extension download page from where you can purchase the selected extension. 

After downloading the Authorize.net payment gateway extension, upload the folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.

Now, activate WP Travel Engine – Authorize.net Payment Gateway from the Plugins menu within WordPress. 

Once you activate the extension, you need to redirect to WP Travel Engine -> Settings -> Payments from the left sidebar. 

After that, click on the Authorize.net tab to continue. 

Here, you need to enter a valid API login id and a valid transaction key from Authorize.net. Once you do it, click the Save & Continue button at the bottom right corner. 

You have successfully added the Authorize.net Payment Gateway extension to your travel booking website. 

ii. Group Discount

This extension helps you provide a group discount on the basis of the number of travelers when they book a trip from your website. You can set a discount range for people of different age groups. Offering a group discount is the best way to increase the conversion rate and the number of bookings. 

Now, you can refer to the below video or follow the steps below to add this extension to your travel booking website:

From the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard, hover over to the WP Travel Engine plugin and click on Extensions to find the Group Discount extension for your website same as before.

After that, click the Get the Extension button placed right below the Group Discount add-on. 

Once you click, you will get redirected to the extension download page from where you can purchase the Group Discount extension. 

After downloading the Group Discount extension, upload the folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.

Now, activate WP Travel Engine – Group Discount from the Plugins menu within WordPress. 

After you activate the extension, go to the WP Travel Engine > Plugin License from the left sidebar to activate the license. Once you add the license key, click the Save Changes button to continue. 

Now, you can configure the settings for Group Discount via WP Travel Engine > Settings > Extension > Group Discount.

Here, enable the Group Discount and then click on Save & Continue to save the settings.

You can check the Group Discount option by going to Trips > Add New > Pricing and Dates > Packages > Edit > Pricing Categories.

iii. Trip Fixed Starting Dates

Trip Fixed Starting Dates extension enables you to set specific dates when the trips can be booked. Besides, it lets you set the number of available spots and recurring time.  

Now, You can either follow the video or the below steps to add this extension to your travel booking website:

From the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard, hover over to the WP Travel Engine plugin and click on Extensions to find the Trip Fixed Starting Dates extension for your website same as before.

After that, click the Get the Extension button placed right below the Trip Fixed Starting Dates add-on. 

Once you click, you will get redirected to the extension download page from where you can purchase the Trip Fixed Starting Dates extension. 

After downloading the Trips Fixed Starting Dates extension, upload the folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.

Now, activate WP Travel Engine – Trip Fixed Starting Dates from the Plugins menu within WordPress. 

After you activate the extension, go to the WP Travel Engine > Plugin License from the left sidebar to activate the license. Once you add the license key, click the Save Changes button to continue. 

Now, you can configure the settings for Trip Fixed Starting Dates via WP Travel Engine > Settings > Extension > Fixed Starting Dates.

Here, enable the show Fixed Trip Starts Dates section and click the Save & Continue button to save the settings. 

You can check the Trip Fixed Starting Dates option by going to Trips > Add New > Pricing and Dates > Packages > Edit > Dates.

iv. Itinerary Downloader

Itinerary Downloader is the extension for the WP Travel Engine plugin that helps you generate the itinerary PDF. It also lets you include different content of the trip to create an offline trip detail brochure file for easy access.  

Now, you can either follow the video or the below steps to add this extension to your travel booking website:

From the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard, hover over to the WP Travel Engine plugin and click on Extensions to find the Itinerary Downloader extension for your website same as before.

After that, click the Get the Extension button placed right below the Itinerary Downloader add-on. 

Once you click, you will get redirected to the extension download page from where you can purchase the Itinerary Downloader extension. 

After downloading the Itinerary Downloader extension, upload the folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.

Now, activate WP Travel Engine – Itinerary Downloader from the Plugins menu within WordPress. 

After you activate the extension, go to the WP Travel Engine > Plugin License from the left sidebar to activate the license. Once you add the license key, click the Save Changes button to continue. 

Now, you can configure the settings for Itinerary Downloader via WP Travel Engine > Settings > Extension > Itinerary Downloader.

Here, enable the Itinerary Downloader section and click the Save & Continue button to save the settings. 

You should make sure that your travel itinerary is up to the mark to help your users reach their travel destination with ease. Here are the ways how you can write travel itineraries for different trip packages. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Our Verdict

If you follow the aforementioned steps properly, you will have a fully functional travel booking website at your disposal. Once you are ready with your website, you can add features and functionalities as per your business requirements. 

Though WordPress makes it easier to create a travel booking website, it could take some time for you to get acquainted with some features and customization options. Make sure your website has important features like a booking system and payment system to get underway. 

As you move forward, don’t hesitate to experiment and try new things on your travel website. In the meantime, don’t forget to do SEO for your travel website if you want to be found. In the meantime, check out this thorough guide on how to increase traffic to your travel website. 

Share your thoughts about this guide in the comments section below. All the best!