We’ve just developed an amazing WordPress plugin for vacation rental websites.    One of the most onerous and time consuming tasks is building and maintaining a vacation rental website.   Rates change,  properties get updated,  new pictures are taken, etc.   This is especially true if you are a vacation rental property manager with large numbers of properties and inventory that changes quite frequently as owners commit or leave your management program.

The net of it it all is that your website should update as your inventory updates.   The vacation rental management software that is used to power your business should be the sole source of all your updates.  Thus if you add, edit, delete or disable a property within your management software, that change should then reflect on both your website and any thrid party marketing sites where your property is listed.   Oh we can dream!!!

Lodgix.com has taken the first step towards real time updating of both your website and any third party marketing site by developing a wordpress plugin that also is Thesis framework compatible!

THIS PLUGIN REQUIRES AN INNFIRST.COM SUBSCRIPTION

To view the plugin live, go to the top of this page and click on the “Vacation Rentals” menu item.  This menu item is generated by the plugin.  The plug-in output requires a minimum of 700px width.

All rentals are listed and sortable by bedroom, bathrooms, price, etc.    All data, rates and images are pulled from your Lodgix.com account.   When you click on the title of a property, you are brought to the individual property page which displays the full listing data for each property including a google map and the individal booking calendar for that unit.

The individual property page can be styled according to your own settings using CSS.

The property pages use standard thickboxeffect for image display, but we will be bundling instructions for using Highslide and other effects if you wish.

When a property is edited, deleted or added to Lodgix.com, the application notifies your website and the website pages are regenerated and will immediately reflect the changes.

The same is true for your listings on third party marketing websites.   For example, each property on Lodgix.com, gets a free listing on VacationRentalDirect.com.   Like your website, your property listing on VacationRentalDirect.com will get updated if any edits, additions or deletions are made to Lodgix.com.

The WordPress plug-in is not yet available for public download.   However, if you email me at sales@innfirst.com, I will provide you with a zipped copy.   We offer  a free, no credit card required, 30 day trial of Lodgix.com.  So sign up for the free trial, add a few properties, install the plugin to your WordPress site and see for yourself how easy it is to create a great looking vacation rental website in less than an hour!!

Vacation Rental Website Design

If you are considering building out a new website for your vacation rental business, look no further than the Lodgix.com team of talented vacation rental website designers / developers.

We recently designed and launched:

and are working on a relaunch for  Sanford Realty in Cape Coral, FL as well as Harbour Island Realty in the Bahamas.

Call me (Brent) at 612-501-2548 directly to discuss your vacation rental website needs!

Someday we are going to put out a wordpress plugin for Lodgix.com.  But until we do, wordpress users should know that Lodgix.com currently supplies HTML code for embeddable widgets and booking buttons  that can easily be placed anywhere in your wordpress blog or website.

However, I can envision some really nice functionality that a vacation rental management and booking calendar plugin for wordpress would contain:

• single sign-on with wordpress
• reservation notifications
• property listings / photos

The real meat of the application would still be hosted in Lodgix.com servers, but once your properties are all set up, some of the functionality could be present on wordpress only requiring the property owner to occasionally flip over to the application to process payments, send out invoices, etc.

To sign-up for the free, no credit card required, 30 day trial of Lodgix.com please click on the image below: