One of the most profitable variants of travel websites will be projects that are immediately aimed at selling various travel products and services. They rarely attract high traffic, but the revenue per 1000 visitors can be 10 or even 100 times higher than a blog or portal. Anyone can create a similar project. You only need to buy a domain, hosting and premium WordPress theme.
You’ll encounter difficulties at the promotion stage: traffic will need to be attracted from social networks, you’ll need to work with news hooks and other media, build your own brand and return users through re-targeting and contextual advertising. The search for really lucrative offers and low prices amidst all this work no longer appears to be such a difficult task.
In this article, we will focus specifically on the technical aspects of creating such sites. Since there are no special features in choosing a domain and hosting or in installing a CMS (WordPress is used in our case) for travel sites, we will go straight to choosing a suitable theme.
If you have extremely limited budget and time to develop your own solution or you just need to test an idea, the ideal option is to purchase a high-quality paid template. The result will be better than in the version with modifications to a free template and a bunch of plug-ins. Besides, don’t forget to download Travelpayouts Travel WordPress plugin that would provide you a lot of useful tools.
On the Internet, there are quite a lot of places where you can buy good themes. My favorite is themeforest.net.
Which Themes Are Worth Seeing First of All?
To simplify the search, I have already implemented it for you and selected the themes I find most interesting, which are perfect for creating a travel website.
The difference between this list and other similar ones is that I have been working on commercial sites for 5 years and on tourism for 3 years. I personally test all these themes on real websites, and therefore I can confidently highlight their weaknesses and strengths.
1. The7 — Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
Purpose: The The7 theme is the perfect choice when creating a website that offers a variety of travel services – from flight tickets to transfers and excursions. It’s not very suitable when you plan to track last-minute tours or flight discounts.
It’s an ideal theme for the first travel site. There is a convenient visual editor that can be used to create even complex pages easier than typing text in MS Word. The set containing the theme includes many excellent sliders, plug-in for setting up popups, tables with prices and much more.
A distinctive feature of this theme is its huge number of options and settings, which are very competently grouped. Everything is simple and understandable.
A distinctive feature of this theme is its huge number of options and settings, which are very competently grouped. Everything is simple and understandable.
The large selection of ready-made websites will help beginners a lot; the sites can be copied with one click and adapted for tourism.
Cons: A good hosting is needed for this theme; sometimes the theme can work a little slow.
2. Newspaper
Purpose: Sites with discounts and interesting offers, travel life hacks, etc.
This Newspaper theme is used by many projects. It’s a great choice if the main value of the site is “news”. For example, last-minute tours, cheap flights or any other discounts and promo codes.
This is one of the most convenient themes in our review. It features a very intriguing visual editor – you will see the typed text exactly as it appears on the site. There are also many ways to display news, several predefined design options, a separate fast mobile theme (and not just an adaptive layout), advertising control on the site, built-in functionality for translating the theme into different languages, many widgets, video tutorials and detailed instructions for the theme.
Cons: You can’t change the width of the article. The theme uses 696 pixels, but the standard for banners and advertising is 728. It doesn’t fit. When migrating a site from one domain to another, it is not always possible to preserve all the settings.
3. Avada
Purpose: Excellent for a site offering travel services. Especially if you want to emphasize that your company has been in the market for several years.
The most popular paid theme in the world. It is known for its own visual editor and quite rich choice of settings. The set containing the theme includes many ready-made sites, but their quality is not that too high.
For such a rich functionality, the theme works quite fast, but there are still minor defects.
Cons: There is quite a lot of small and almost imperceptible “wrinkles”. This theme is extremely popular and has a characteristic and slightly outdated design, and for this reason your site will seem vaguely familiar and you can’t say how people would perceive it.
4. Houzez
Purpose: Ideal for a site with a directory of housing accommodations, travel real estate, recreation facilities, sanatoria, camps, etc.
Offers a very beautiful and modern design, as well as an excellent speed for such a rich functionality. You can create a user-filled directory featuring payment for housing accommodation. For example, you can make a directory of housing accommodations in a city and charge the homeowners an annual fee for the ad.
In the theme, all accommodations are displayed on the map – you can search for accommodation not only by photos and price, but by location or distance to the sea. There are many really different design options, including landings. You can add a video or even a virtual tour or panorama.
Cons: The filter system is not flexible enough; the lightbox (pop-up window in which photos of real estate are shown) behaves strangely on large screens. When migrating from domain to domain, some settings may not be preserved.
5. ListingPro
Purpose: Creation of various directories. You can create, for example, a directory of travel agencies, attractions, sightseeing bureaus or restaurants in a particular city.
This theme is known for its very rich functionality, which is included by default. Many competitors prefer to sell the theme, and then sell plug-ins that allow users to upload their own accommodation facilities, while you as the site owner accept payment.
The excellent search and filtering system (including accommodation facilities on the map), ability by users to add reviews with pictures and ratings, and vote for other reviews, a convenient and visually attractive system for adding accommodation facilities with the option to charge fees appropriately, a built-in advertising control system and many nearly not noticeable, but pleasant little things are all worth highlighting in the functionality.
Cons: The theme does not work as fast as we would like it to do. It appeared recently and hasn’t yet had the time to prove its worth. Some design elements raise questions.
6. Jupiter
Purpose: For creation of a website that offers a variety of travel services.
There are already two similar themes (Avada and The7) in the selection, but I couldn’t but include this one. It features excellent speed and load. The theme works smoothly and doesn’t slow down even on old computers. There is quite a lot of in-built really original functionality. There is a large selection of ready-made sites of average quality, which can be installed just with a couple of mouse clicks.
It is only in this theme that real attention was devoted to blog. For this reason, news and travel life hacks will look beautiful and organic.
Also, at the time of writing this article, clearance sale is going on and the theme can be bought at a significant discount.
Cons: The theme seemed to me a bit less flexible than the previous one. Its built-in functionality works perfectly, but problems would immediately arise once you want to make a custom cap. It was claimed that the theme will have free add-ons, but it’s been several years now since the promise was made without developing the add-ons.
7. Love Travel
Purpose: This theme is suitable for creating a site for a small tour operator or travel agency. It’s a good option for those offering excursions.
This is the only theme customized to suit tourism in this selection. It turned out so because no matter how hard I worked with travel themes, their functionality, design and quality were much inferior to the universal ones. The result turned out worse, and the obstacles much more.
It is almost the only theme in the market with a beautiful design and rich travel features. There are various ways to display a list of tours on the map, there is sorting, tour packages, tours and much more.
One of my websites uses this theme. Despite the fact that the project is frozen due to lack of interest in its development, you can see what can be done in 1 week (development and content) using this theme.
Cons: The theme code is not always optimal, but understandable even to a novice developer. When migrating from one domain to the other, the title pictures of tours are not preserved and the preview does not always work correctly. A good developer will be needed to get the theme into shape.
Other Great Themes for Travel Websites
According to statistics from Travelpayouts, colleagues actively use specialized travel themes. I didn’t have the chance to work with the themes, but it would be unprofessional not to include them in the selection.
8. Traveler — Travel/Tour/Booking WordPress Theme
Purpose: An excellent option for creating a large portal for booking a full range of travel services.
The theme is a powerful combine that provides its own interface for booking hotels, tours, car rentals, excursions, etc. You can even make a kind of marketplace, where third-party suppliers can place their offers.
The advantage of such an approach is that you will be able to offer a full range of tourism and travel-related services in a single interface, and therefore, build your own separate brand. But it’s still not very clear on how to exactly implement transfer of applications in affiliate programs and payment because not all affiliate programs have an API. Also it has an integration with Travelpayouts Flights White Label out of the box.
Pros: Travelpayouts integration, good support, frequent updates.
Cons: There are a significant number of minor flaws and inefficient interface solutions, which are not fundamental but can cause confusion among users. It is not clear how to integrate affiliate programs (especially local ones).
9. Travelo — Travel/Tour Booking WordPress Theme
Purpose: A good option for creation of an average portal for booking of travel services.
In fact this option is quite similar to the previous one. The functionality is a little more modest here. For example, third-party suppliers cannot add their travel products and services. The interface looks differently, but raises questions too in some places.
It seems to me that these themes should rather be used to test a business model and if the outcome is satisfactory, it is better to begin developing own solution, which isn’t restricted by the features of the CMS or theme.
Cons: It’s not clear what method can be used to implement integration with affiliate programs and how to accept payment from visitors. Subjectively, the theme is considerably inferior to the previous option.
Love Travel – Wordpress travel template
Love Travel is a fresh WordPress travel theme. It is one of the best travel wordpress themes in 2019. You can use it to build your own online travel agency, or just a simple blog.
It’s not just ready for WooCommerce, but also for CPA integration. A wide selection of formats will allow you to create unique pages for air tickets, hotels, tours, car rentals and other tourist services.
Travelmatic – Wordpress travel theme
Travelmatic seems to be a simple template, but don’t neglect it, it is one of the best travel wordpress templates in 2019. We love it for it’s cleanness. Here are a couple examples: http://travelmjn.eu/, https://www.umelf.de/ and https://www.malivyletnici.sk/.
This travel site template for WordPress is a great solution for small travel blogs who care about readers. You can ruin the cleanliness with advertisements, so place advertisements and affiliate tools wisely if you want to save the spirit of the template.
***
P.S. All links in the article are affiliate links. Not because I’m interested in income from affiliates, but to track how many people actually used these tips and whether it makes sense writing a series of similar articles.
***
P.P.S. In the article, the terms “theme” and “template” mean the same, although from a technical point of view it is not correct.
