As the vacation rental industry market continues to grow, the tools needed to ensure a successful vacation rental business becomes more diverse. Building your own platform to gather direct bookings as well as promote your rental property is becoming a key building block to long-term success. It’s vital to pick the platform that is best for your vacation rental business.

There are many tools that automate the process for you and can do most of the work; so combining the use of sites like Airbnb, Vrbo (formerly Homeaway), Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and others with a direct booking website will ensure the best outcome. However, not all sites or platforms are made equal, finding the best platform that suits your needs is important!

As a property manager or owner, it is crucial to not only maintain the property itself but also increase the revenue and bookings for the vacation rental property. One way to increase bookings is by building a custom website design to drive in more traffic.

Though WordPress has many website templates and customization features, it may take more time and knowledge than many owners and property managers have. This is where vacation rental website builders come into play.

The Purpose Of A Vacation Rental Website Builder

Building a great website can be a difficult and at times overwhelming project, a task many owners or managers will not have time to do. Using a vacation rental website builder can not only increase your revenue and direct bookings, but it will also simplify the process of creating a website too.

By using a vacation rental website builder that has a pre-built template, this allows the owner or property manager to focus more time on what is important: guests! Each website builder is unique and different in its own way. They will vary in price, styles, and usability.

With many options on the market, it is vital to invest in one that can support your business short term and long term. Below are a few user-friendly vacation rental website builders to help maximize your bookings.

Lodgify

The one-stop-shop, Lodgify can do it all. From managing your bookings to creating a stunning website, the all-inclusive site is easy to use and will be up in running in no time. Each of their templates is mobile-friendly and features an integrated booking engine so guests can reserve directly on your website and skip the third party.

There is no coding experience needed to build or design this sight, taking the stress out of the process. Lodgify offers clients with a large property inventory custom plans to ensure they are getting what is best for their clients.

There are also no set contracts, they take the number of rentals along with the type of package you would like and base your bill off of that. They have monthly, yearly, and two-year payment options.

Some features include managing all reservations from one place to allow you to generate quotes, create autoresponders, and automate many of your payment transactions. You can also use Lodgify’s Channel Manager to easily synchronize your calendars, rates, and reservations across all 3rd party sites. Enjoy using your own domain name as well as taking advantage of the Book Now button, dynamic pricing, online support, SEO, and receiving debit / credit card payments.

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FutureStay

FutureStay connects the guests, brand, and channels without any manual work. They have implemented the use of smart connections that allows the owner or manager to disburse funds for refunds and cancellations, or capture failed credit cards.

The payment and booking automation will complete a booking for you without having to lift a finger. Enjoy the reservation history and timeline, to the minute, of every reservation, payment, and interaction with a client. The guest relationships coordinator will apply for automatic discounts and promotions, leaving your guests happy and excited about their stay.

Between the flexible booking engine and the automated guest communication, no client will slip through the crack. The dashboard is easy to navigate and offers the option for a Spanish site as well. Any site built is mobile friendly and automatically populates your property information, pricing, and availability using your dashboard. FutureStay offers a free standard dashboard with a markup of 10% and an autopilot dashboard for $9/ month +$1 per unit with a markup of 5%.

Wix

Wix gives you the opportunity to create, design, manage, and develop your web presence exactly the way you want. The interactive platform has options to add advanced features such as a blog or a booking engine. You can optimize your search engines with their specialized SEO plan to promote your business online.

The code-free experience makes Wix one of the biggest platforms for small, and large, business owners. You can choose from hundreds of their designer-made templates or create your own website.

Wix has the only drag-and-drop website building platform with HTML5 capabilities. They also offer top grade hosting, innovative apps, and thousands of features for free.

There are several different plans available for Wix users. You can choose for a personal website or a business/e-commerce site. Both offer 4 different plans, Basic to VIP, and ranges from $13-500 a month depending on which plan you choose.

OwnerRez

The powerful, flexible way to manage many vacation rental properties without a large staff. This booking management, automation, widgets, and reporting system gives you the control to do more in less time. Get a sense of your bookings across all properties in one quick glance, while hovering over bookings shows a quick popup with details.

Create a system that works for you by adding only what you need to use in your package. Property management has never been made easier with this simple ribbon dashboard calendar site.

Pricing starts at $28.99 a month and adjusts with your plan. The simplicity of the site makes it compatible to use on any mobile device.

Guesty

Guesty’s platform is integrated with the world’s top online travel agencies, as well as other third-party solutions that help you and your vacation rental business succeed. Enjoy features like the channel manager to seamlessly distribute and control all of your listings, or the revenue management to keep track of every payment interaction.

Guesty charges 2-5% of each booking. The pricing structure is based on the number of listings managed, and the different features selected. Based on their unique needs, users can choose anything from software-only to the full package, which includes 24/7 Guest Communication Service.

You can sync your existing website or create a brand new one with a comprehensive catalog of your portfolio. Vacation rental owners will love the look and feel of the site.

MyVR

MyVR is an all-in-one property management software and channel manager. You can streamline workflows, save time, increase accuracy, and maximize revenue from one modern platform with all the tools and flexibility you need to scale your business.

Enjoy the drag and drop website builder that is easy to navigate so potential guests can easily find what they are looking for. The property management software offers advanced features including unit-type inventory, rate & fee plans, and housekeeping while keeping the property owners’ minds at ease knowing everything is taken care of.

There are 3 different plans to choose from, basic, plus, and professional. The pricing starts at $13.50 and there is a $999 startup fee.

iGMS

iGMS boasts you can build your vacation rental website in one click. While it’ll take a little more effort than that to customize your site and get it looking the way you’d like, if you already have your properties listed on Airbnb, your site really is just a click away. By building your site on iGMS, you won’t need to deal with developers or have any coding knowledge.

A unique aspect of iGMS that sets them apart from other website builders on this list is that iGMS syncs to your Airbnb listings and pulls all of your property information and converts it into a fully functioning website. iGMS will pull everything from your pictures, pricing, amenities, property information, and more.

With your iGMS and Airbnb site already synced together, they also sync your booking calendars to ensure you don’t get double booked between platforms. Anytime a booking is made on your site or a third party site, like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, among others, the calendars automatically update on all platforms and will be shown on your iGMS calendar.

This really is a great option for those that manage their properties among a variety of different platforms and want to manage them all in one place. It’s also a great choice for property managers who don’t want to spend time on design and development of a site and would rather have the quickest solution possible.

iGMS also does pricing a little bit differently. Based on the plan you choose, you can either pay per property or per nights booked.

Custom Site

Building a custom sight may seem daunting but it gives the owner or property manager the control to decide the vacation rental website design. You can add in booking engine widgets/plugins and other comprehensive systems to make the best vacation rental software for your specific needs. With a custom site, you follow no template so your homepage and whole site can represent your brand the way you choose.

You can also integrate other listing sites through custom-built channel managers. You choose your own domain, as well as what property listings you want to feature. Rental property managers can update the customizable site and blast new listings to social media or Google for more traffic with ease.

Pricing can range to as little as the domain if you build the whole site yourself, or you can call in a professional company for help.