Why should you have a travel website?
Having your own travel website is like a journal; you can express your thoughts and make a difference in your industry. It also adds more benefits to your tour business.
1. Professional Web Presence
Having your own travel website gives the impression that you are serious about your travel business in addition to having a local office. It also represents that you are ready to do business with all kinds of customers.
2. Available 24/7
Having your tour website online means your business is available 24/7. Regardless of country and time zones, customers can easily find you online anytime and anywhere.
3. Build Online Reputation
Build your brand reputation by including customer testimonials on your website. According to research 86% of people would pay more for tour services from a company with higher ratings and reviews.
4. Get Online Leads
Optimizing your website for SEO not only increases your rankings but also helps to gain new customers online. In a nutshell, your tour website will be your leading salesperson for your travel business.
5. Save Money
You can cut Brick-and-Mortar costs by having an online travel website. Via your tour website, you can reach a wider audience without spending too much.
How to create your own tour website?
In this article, we show you two methods to create your tour website, including its pros and cons. You can choose the best method which is feasible for you.
Option 1 – Using Content Management Platforms [CMS]
Step 1: Choose the right CMS for your website
There are a lot of CMS systems available in the market, for example, WordPress, CMS Hub, Magento, Drupal, etc.. Choosing the right CMS can be a daunting process, but considering the following points will help you choose the best.
- Ease of use
- User-friendly
- Customizability
- Security
- Pricing
- Customer support
- Prevalence in the market
Here is the list of CMS platforms you can consider before you choose one.
Step 2: Buy the right hosting plan
If you are building a website using CMS, you’ll need to signup for a hosting plan. It offers the facilities required to create and maintain your website and makes it accessible on the internet.
There are hundreds of hosting providers in the market, and they offer various kinds of hostings like shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and VPS (Virtual Private Server).
Here is the advantage and disadvantage of each hosting which will help you to choose the right hosting provider.
Once you decide what hosting you need, you can pick a hosting provider. Since this step is for CMS, the following hosting providers work better. DreamHost, HostGator, and Bluehost are among the most popular third-party providers and offer free domain registration for the first year.
Step 3: Register your domain name
A domain name is a virtual address for your website; for example, advensure.io is our domain name. Similarly, you must choose the domain name and register it with a domain registry site like Domain.com, Godaddy, etc.
Note: DreamHost, HostGator, and Bluehost let you choose a domain name for free as part of the signup process.
Here are some tips to choose a perfect domain name
Step 4: Select a website theme
Themes play an important role, and it helps to change your website’s look and feel without having HTML & CSS code. Most of the CMS comes with a directory of free themes where you can filter and select a theme based on your brand specifications.
If you can’t find the relevant theme for free, you can find premium themes on third-party marketplaces like ThemeForest.
Step 5: Customize your website theme
After selecting your theme, it’s time to customize it based on your brand aesthetic. You can customize the texts, layouts, and widgets based on your needs. Customization on WordPress requires much more technical skill than it does with website builders.
Step 6: Create pages and add content
Before creating your pages, decide what pages you need to include on your website, like About us, Testimonial, Packages, Cruises, Contact us, etc.; you should always add a blog page since it adds more value to your travel business.
Once you decide on the pages, you can create content for those pages and add it to the page. While every CMS is different, it’s typically easy to add and remove pages on whichever platform you use. Let’s take a closer look at the process on WordPress, for example.
1.Login to your WordPress dashboard
2. On the left side of the screen, click Pages > Add New
3. If you want to create a post, click Posts > Add New
Both ‘Add New’ options will take you to the editor, where you can add content, preview, and publish.
Step 6: Choose & install useful Add ons
After publishing your content, check out your website and find out what functionality is missing. Ideally, your CMS will offer all the add-ons you need to extend your website functionality.
Add-ons are apps, extensions, modules, integrations, and plugins depending on the platform that you use.
If you are running your website on WordPress you can use plugins that are available in the WordPress plugin directory.
Let’s say your CMS doesn’t have an inbuilt feature to optimize for SEO; check if your platform offers an integration or plugin to fulfill that functionality on your website.
Step 7: Publish your website
All done? It’s time to publish your website on the internet. Your work isn’t done yet. If you want to have a good website, then you have to maintain it regularly. You have to customize your website based on the latest updates.
📌Use this checklist for detailed things you should check before, during, and after your website launch
Option 2 – Using Tour Website Builder [Advensure]
Let’s take a look to make a travel website using the Advensure tour website builder.
Step 1: Signup for a plan
If you are on a budget, this could be your best option since the Advensure plan starts at as low as the cost of $15/month with 30 days free trial option.
Step 2: Choose a domain name
There are 2 options available while choosing your domain, by default Advensure creates the domain name (basically a subdomain of Advensure.io also known as Advensure managed domain) using the organization name you enter on the signup process.
In this demo example, we provided the organization name as “Ekahal” so our website domain name was created as ekahal.advensure.io
If you don’t want a subdomain and want your own domain name, there is an option to do that. Simply click the “connect another domain” button on the dashboard
You have to make sure that you registered your domain name with the DNS provider. You can refer “Register your domain name” section in this article.
You can follow the instructions to connect your domain with the Advensure travel website builder.
Step 3: Choose a theme for your tour website
In the dashboard under the scale section go to Website > Theme.
From this page, you can customize your website appearance like font, and color. There are nearly 100+ fonts available to select from and you can also preview that font on the side of the dashboard.
You can customize the font for your website title and paragraph separately.
Step 3: Customize your website
Customize home page
Before customization, your default website home page looks something like this.
To edit this home page go to “Homepage” under “website section”. You can edit banner images, banner text, and listing titles and click save.
Add a filter feature
Filters play an important role when it comes to listing related websites, it adds a more user-friendly effect to your visitors. Your visitors can filter the activities/tours based on their needs like pricing, date, and location etc.,
Advensure offers 4 types of filters (Locations, Categories, Date Range, Price), based on your business need you can enable the filter on your website.
To enable the filter, go to Advensure Dashboard > Scale > Website > Filters. After saving your edits it will be visible to your website.
List your activities/tours
Add Activity / Tour / Rental Listing
The main motto of having a travel website is to showcase your offerings to your customers. You can list your trips/activities by simply going to Advensure dashboard > Serve > Activity Listing > Add Listing
On Add listing page you can add the listing details like name, location, category, no of days, Timeslots etc.,
You have to choose the category and sub-category from the details. Advensure offers category types
- Activities
- Rentals
- Tours & Events
Once you select the category that your business falls under, you have to select subcategories.
Advensure suggests numerous subcategories based on the main category you chose before. For example, if you select “Activity” as the main category, you can see the following subcategories
- Bungee jumping
- Canoeing
- Cycling
- Giant Swing
- Hot Air Ballooning
- Kayaking
- Kite Surfing
- Motor Biking
- Paddle Boarding
- Paragliding
- Trekking and more
Similar to this, you get suggestions for the other 2 categories.
You can also automate your booking confirmation by enabling “automatic” under listing settings.
Cool! isn’t it?
Add Date To The Listing
Once you edit your listing, click save, it will take you to the next page where you can select the available & unavailable dates for your tours & activities.
By enabling “Different price” feature you can set up the special price on special days such as weekends, holidays etc.,
Add Pricing To The Listing
After setting up the available/unavailable date for your activity/tour /rental listing you can now add the pricing details to it.
In the pricing, you can setup tax percentages, deposit percentage, refund amount etc.,
You can also create different pricing packages for adults, children, couples, etc., once you are done with it, click save.
Add The Details To The Listing
In the next step, add a description and other details like things to remember, items to carry and any pre conditions and click save.
Add Video/Images To The Listing
Include the images & videos of the tour / rental / activity which helps to attract more visitors to take action.
Add Itinerary To The Listing
Ensure all the important details are included in the itinerary; there’ll be no time wasted traveling between places, activities, or accommodations. It will help you to maintain a good relationship with your clients.
Once you are done with all the edits to your activity/rental/tour listing, its now time to publish it, to do that, please enable this checkbox.
Add New Pages
To include new pages to your website like about us, contact us etc., Just go to Advensure dashboard > Scale > Website Pages > Pages > Add Page
After adding the new page, now its time to edit the pages. You can add a page title and a description of the page.
Add Pages To Menu
You can easily add that page into Header / Footer menu by simply clicking the checkbox.
Advensure offers easy way to include your pages either in main menu / sub menu by simply selecting the tab.
You can also arrange the position of the page in the menu grid by simply selecting the number under parent position.
Header Menu Example:
Child Menu Example:
If you want to include your page as a sub-menu, click the “add as a child” tab and select the parent category under which you want to add your particular page.
Add content to that page
After including the page into the menu, its time to add content to the pages. You can select the layout of the page and add the images and details of the pages. Once done click save.
Enable the checkbox to publish the page on your website.
Add Custom Menu
This feature helps you to showcase your listing on marketplaces by including that marketplace link in your menu.
You can add your custom menu on both header and footer.
To do this, go to Dashboard > Scale > Website Pages > Custom Menu
Remember to save your edits.
Step 4: Optimize Your Travel Website For SEO
You don’t need any additional add-ons to optimize your travel website for search engines. You can find separate fields for SEO titles and descriptions while editing your pages.
For example, if you want to add SEO for your home page go to Dashboard > Scale > Website > Home Page
You can find the SEO section on that page.
Similarly, you can optimize your other pages too. Let’s say you want to edit your activity/tour listing page; go to Activity listing > Click Edit > Go to SEO page > Add Details > Click Save
Step 5: Add-Ons
The travel industry is becoming competitive day by day, to thrive in this competitive world, we need to provide some unique and attractive add-ons with your travel package.
Using Advensure travel website builder, you can use add-ons for free, you don’t need to pay separately as like other website builders.
To enable this add-on option go to Dashboard > Activity Listing >Click Edit > Go to Add Ons Page > Click Any Add On > Edit Details > Save
Step 5: Subscription Box
Blogs play an important role in lead generation. To grow your email list you need to setup newsletter subscription option on your website. Unlike CMS you do not need to install additional add ons to enable this feature.
Just go to Dashboard > Scale > Website > Home Page > Subscription Text
You get notified whenever you get a new subscriber.
You can view and export your subscriber list from Dashboard > Scale > Customers > Subscribers.
Step 5: Test Your Website
Once you are done with all the edits, check the live website and its functionalities. Here is the demo website we created while making this guide for you:)
Conclusion
| Website Builder | Content Management System |
|---|---|
Domain registration, hosting, and SSL certificate included | Domain registration, hosting, and SSL certificate must be purchased separately |
In-built templates & themes (Less variety) | In-built templates & themes (More variety) |
Perfect for beginners | Suitable for intermediate & emerging business |
In-built booking engine available – which is a must for travel websites | Need to install add-ons to enable this |
Limited customization | Advanced customization is available, which needs a little bit of coding knowledge. |
Building a travel website is a must-do for anyone who wants to grow their travel business online. Without a website, your business might seem outdated. Every business needs to be up-to-date in the market.
The website makes you more professional and helps you to maintain a good relationship with your customer of any age!
Using this guide, you’ll understand the importance of having a travel website and how to create a new one from scratch.
Divya is a marketer, nature lover & startup enthusiast. She has an immaculate experience in GTM strategy & SEO. She always follows her instinct and travels with her Ikigai.
