Our Top Private Holiday Home Website Design & Development Tips

Private Holiday Home websites are set up & run directly by the homeowners without involvement from third-party property websites.

Although their homes may be listed on websites such as Airbnb, owners create their own site to more accurately reflect the unique style of vacation that is on offer. No third party can communicate this as clearly within their restrictive framework.

Types of holiday homes can range from log cabin woodland retreats to desert island beach houses. Each requires its own bespoke design & development solution.

Holiday Home Website Design

The purpose of a holiday home website is to attract the right kind of clientele who are looking for a unique vacation experience.

These people are often quite affluent and happy to spend good money on their holiday rental if there is something special about the offering, such as:

• Location and setting – Off the beaten track
• Private / Restricted access – Delivering a sense of exclusivity
• Luxury Design – Architecture and interior design
• Excellent range of amenities and activities
• Concierge services

The target demographic is used to a certain standard of living and would like their vacation home to align with this standard. Perhaps even exceed their expectations if possible.

So, in order to attract this audience to your website, you will need to invest in a high standard of web design that aims to represent the home in its best light.

Holiday Home Case Study

One client who wished to create their own holiday home website was Paradise Pines.

Situated in a private woodland space, this luxury cabin offers precisely the type of escape that pressured city workers often dream of.

Paradise Pines had previously been handled exclusively by Canopy and Stars, but their web design is a little outdated and fails to communicate the quality of this English woodland getaway.

With this in mind, LWDA was approached to create a bespoke website design. One that would reflect the quality of the build and create a level of desirability in the viewer.

Working closely with the client, we identified the key website requirements:

1. Professional branding
2. Modern / Minimal approach to website design
3. Great photography
4. Booking form
5. Integration with Google My Business

Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail…

Professional Brand Identity Design

It’s all well & good having a beautiful website, but if the brand itself doesn’t connect with your audience, you may as well flush your money down the toilet.

So, before you decide to invest in a new website, you should review your branding and make sure it’s good enough to connect with your target market.

Paradise Pines wanted a way to elevate themselves above the competition and there was no better way to do this than with a new logo design and colour palette that accurately reflected the experience of staying in such a unique location.

The new brand would influence the site’s design in terms of fonts and colour palettes.

Modern Website Design

Design is subjective, so trying to define what the term ‘modern website design’ means is tricky. The term would mean different things to different people. But compare the Paradise Pines website to their listing partner Canopy and Stars and I think you’ll get the gist of where we are coming from.

We decided to approach the new website like a gallery space, using big images against neutral backgrounds to deliver maximum impact.

The text was kept to a minimum, which again allowed the images to be the focal point of the site.

Other design considerations included:

• Use of brand web fonts instead of standard system fonts. Paying attention to letterspacing, italics and subtle use of caps.
• Sophisticated brand colour palette.
• Use of a thick white border and white text areas to give the site a light and fresh feel.
• ‘Sticky navigation’ for great UI & UX.

This simple approach to design also benefitted mobile users, delivering a fast responsive website experience.

Great photography makes for a great website

We mentioned above how we wanted to make photography the focal point of the new website. Thankfully the client was able to provide excellent shots of their interior and exterior locations to satisfy this brief.

It really can’t be overstated enough that great photography helps make a great website.

No matter if you are selling a home, clothing or other physical product, the level of sales or enquiries will probably live or die on the quality of the images.

So if you only take away one tip from this article, it’s to make sure you commission some great photography to help sell the experience of staying at your holiday home.

Online Booking Form

Although there are 3rd party providers that will take care of your booking requirements, they tend to charge a fee for the privilege.

Sometimes these fees are just too high to be a viable option for smaller businesses, so our solution was to build a simple web form that sent enquiries directly to their head office.

Once the enquiry had been received, a team member could contact the customer and confirm availability.

The benefit of this approach is that it opens up a direct dialogue between the customer and the owner.

Google My Business Integration

Making sure your location, venue or company is listed with Google My Business is an absolute necessity in today’s market.

Getting your business listed with Google puts your location on Google Maps, making it easy for customers to find you.

Keeping your listing updated with changes to opening hours, accessibility attributes and information about local events will keep your listing relevant and help boost your local SEO.

In conclusion

Investing in your own holiday home website can lead to great rewards.

If you build a website in the right way, you can avoid 3rd-party listing fees and target specific demographics effectively.

Using a combination of good on-site technical SEO and off-site local SEO can boost your search ranking and maximise visibility.

Investing in great photography is key to the success of any website. So make sure you have access to excellent imagery that you can share with your web designers.

If you’re a holiday homeowner and wish to build a website that drives bookings, feel free to get in touch with us at LWDA. We’ll be happy to discuss your needs.

Property Website Design Articles

This article about holiday home website design was the final post in a series focussing on types of property website design.

These articles are as follows:

1. Estate Agent Website Design & Development Tips
2. Real Estate Website Design & Development Tips
3. Resort Website Design & Development Tips

We hope you find these articles helpful and look forward to hearing from you if you’re in need of website design services.

In the meantime, feel free to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook for more insights.