The tourism and travel industry is ever-evolving, and agencies must adapt or get left behind. Apps and websites such as Airbnb, Expedia, TripAdvisor, etc. have revolutionized the way people plan and book their vacations.
Nowadays, it’s almost unthinkable to select a place to eat and stay without first checking online reviews. This is also true for travel and hospitality brands. According to recent studies, online bookings account for over 60% of the $1trillion industry. More than 80% of those are made directly via a website or mobile app, without any human interaction.
Essentially, the modern traveler expects to find their tour, hotel, restaurant, etc. via a search engine or digital advertising. They require to see reviews before making a purchase choice, and they predominantly use an online booking system to finalize their decision.
If your travel or tourism brand lacks a user-friendly, compelling, and findable website, you’ll likely lose a huge chunk of the market. Thankfully, with Elementor and WordPress, you can design a fully-functional and cost-effective travel website with no need for coding knowledge or developers. Elementor’s features, templates, and drag & drop editor means you can custom-design your very own travel website without having to hire developers.
Here’s how to create an awesome travel website in WordPress and Elementor:
What should a travel website include?
Before we begin with our guide to creating the site, we first need to understand the key features of a travel website and its role. Here are some of the important pages and elements that every travel website needs:
1. Homepage
The homepage should feature a captivating hero image that leaves users pining for their dream vacation, along with a message that encapsulates your brand.
The other key features of a travel website homepage are the booking form, search bar for users to find their desired travel package or tour, navigation links to the other pages, and CTAs prompting users to go ahead and book your service.
2. Services Page
The services page is where you’ll showcase your tours, packages, and other services that you provide for travelers and tourists. This page should display dynamic information about the trips and activities on offer, including duration, group size, starting prices, availability, etc.
Be sure to include CTAs for users to instantly book their desired trip.
3. FAQ Page
The FAQ page should answer the most frequent tourist questions, like: “where’s the best place to get a baguette in Paris?” or “where can I find a gluten-free restaurant?”
Answering these questions helps you to build a relationship with potential customers, and establish your expertise with tourists in the destinations that you serve.
4. About Us Page
The about us page is for telling tourists who you are, what you’re about, why you started your travel agency. The page should also include the brand’s mission statement, and identify the agency’s role in servicing travelers.
In addition, the page should include bios, headshots, and social media profiles of the key employees behind the brand. It’s important to build that personal connection with would-be customers,
5. Contact Us Page
The contact page is relatively straightforward. It should feature a contact form, a list of options for getting in touch with a representative, and details of when users can expect a response.
6. Testimonials Page
The testimonials page is vital for the success of your brand. Now more than ever, tourists rely on the reviews of others before deciding which agency or service to use while vacationing.
Be sure to include a testimonial carousel with images of smiling customers, along with quotes about how enjoyable their experience was.
7. Gallery
As the travel industry is highly visual, you should include a dedicated gallery page featuring tantalizing imagery of satisfied customers enjoying their holiday experiences, scenic tour destinations, or resorts – depending on your particular travel service.
8. Travel Blog
The site’s blog should provide a steady stream of travel and company updates to keep your users informed of all the latest goings-on. In addition, blogging about your travel destinations, and things to do and see will help to promote your business via search engines and win that Google traffic
How to Make a Travel Website — A Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Choose your domain name
When you set out to create your own website, the first thing you need to do is get a domain name and a web hosting service. Your domain name will allow visitors to access your website.
Step 2: Choose your web hosting plan
The hosting plan will allow you to house all the files that make up your site. Your hosting server is where you will install WordPress and the add-ons mentioned in this tutorial.
What’s great about WordPress hosting is that it’s optimized specifically for WordPress performance, security needs, installation, and onboarding processes. There is a long list of WordPress hosts to choose from, and many considerations to factor into your selection process.
As far as hosting plans go, they range from affordable shared hosting plans to more expensive managed WordPress hosting and premium dedicated servers. To make your lives easier, we recommend several hosting packages that are fully compatible with Elementor.
Once you’ve signed up for your hosting plan, you will receive a welcome email that will have all the details related to your account. Find the login link to your hosting account area and use the username and password to log into your account.
Step 3: Install WordPress
The next step is to install WordPress. After you have logged in to your hosting account, click on the My Accounts tab and then log in to your cPanel. In cPanel, click on the WordPress icon in the auto-installers area and follow the steps to install WordPress.
After WordPress has been installed, go ahead and visit your WordPress site. Enter the name and password you’ve set up and click ‘Log In’ to access your WordPress dashboard.
(Textual link) See our full guide on how to install WordPress here: How to Install WordPress
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the WordPress software, you can take advantage of the WordPress CMS platform. The flexibility of WordPress lets you choose from tens of thousands of WordPress templates, themes, and plugins.
Step 4: Install Elementor
The next step is to install Elementor, a visual website builder that greatly simplifies the WordPress website building process. Sometimes, WordPress can be an intimidating tool that seems too complex to use on your own. However, by using a visual site builder, you can create your site quickly, efficiently, and comfortably.
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Add New. Search for Elementor Website Builder and click Install. When Elementor has been installed, click Activate.
While Elementor is free, depending on the features you want you’ll also need Elementor Pro to take full advantage of Elementor’s capabilities. Visit Elementor.com and purchase the Pro version of the plugin then install and activate it in the same manner as above. Once Elementor Pro has been installed, you’ll need to enter your license by going to your WordPress dashboard and navigating to Elementor > License.
Because you’re going to be using Elementor Theme Builder and your template kit to design your entire website, you don’t need to look for any design elements in your active WordPress theme.
Instead, you just want the most lightweight, performance-optimized foundation, which is what the Hello theme from Elementor provides.
To get started, go to Appearance → Themes → Add New and search for “Hello Elementor”. Then, install and activate the theme.
Step 5: Choose a travel Template Kit
Once you’ve installed Elementor, the next piece of the puzzle is a travel website template kit. These are individual sets of templates needed for a complete WordPress website: Header, Footer, 404 page, Blog Archive, Single Post, Single Page, Popup, and more.
Our Template Library features websites of many niches, each kit catering to the needs of our user community. These include portfolio sites, digital agency sites, magazine sites, beauty salons, and so much more.
Elementor template kits are also offered by creative marketplaces, such as Envato or ThemeForest.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the Elementor Travel Agency Template
To install the kit, first, create a page called “Home” and click the Edit with Elementor button to launch Elementor.
Then, open the Elementor template library and search for “travel” under Pages. Once you’ve found your desired template, simply click on install.
For more information about installing the kit, see here: Create a Complete Website Using Elementor Kits and Theme Builder
Step 6: Customizing the template kit
Once you have downloaded and installed the kit, you can use the drag & drop editor to customize each and every aspect of the design and layout to tailor it to your needs.
You can change the logo, color scheme, navigation links, website copy, and any other feature that you wish. You can also use the Elementor widgets to add specific functionalities to your website like a custom donate button.
To learn more about customizing your template, visit our help center.
You can also read our thorough guide to creating your Elementor website here.
Step 7: Publish the website
Once you’re completely satisfied with your website’s design, interface, and functionality, then it’s time to publish it live.
- To preview the site, click the icon.
- If you are satisfied with the result, go ahead and click the button.
- Click ‘Have a Look‘ to view the published page
Conclusion
Creating a well-designed, and fully-functional travel website can be a smooth, seamless process with Elementor’s template kits. No coding required, simply download and install Elementor onto your WordPress site, choose your desired template kit, customize, and publish.