PremiumPress
WordPress Vacation Rental Theme

All-in-One WordPress Theme for Vacation Rental Websites

A direct-booking website for your cottage, caravan, lodge, villa or seaside flat, with a nightly calendar, seasonal rates, deposits and calendar sync built in, so guests book with you and no platform takes a cut.

4.6/5 on Trustpilot · Rated Excellent
Key Features

Popular Vacation Rental Website Features

A nightly calendar, seasonal rates, deposits and calendar sync all ship inside the theme, with no booking plugin to add.

A Calendar That Counts Nights

A stay runs from arrival to departure, so one guest’s leaving day is the next guest’s arrival day, and no week is sold twice.

Your Own Weeks, Kept Private

Block nights as Owner staying or Maintenance with a note only you see. Guests just see the dates are taken.

Seasons That Repeat

Set a price for summer or Christmas once and tick Every year, so the peak week is never sold at the standard rate.

Designs

A Website for Every
Kind of Holiday Let

From a cabin in the woods to a villa by the sea, each kind of let has its own designs and sample rooms. Choose one and add your own property.

15 ready-to-use designs

Choose Your Holiday Let Design

Every design is ready to take bookings: swap in your own photos, rooms, prices and colours.

Browse all 15 designs
Free guide

The Vacation Rental Playbook

How to plan, build and grow a vacation rental website that guests book direct, year after year. 34 pages, from choosing a niche to your first 90 days.

Free. We email you a link to read it online or download the PDF. Privacy


Pricing & Payments

Price Your Let Your Way

Set the nightly price, the rules and the extras once. Every quote, invoice and payment follows them, with no commission taken.

Booking Rules

Choose the days guests may arrive and leave, Saturday to Saturday or any day, and set the shortest and longest stay.

Discounts and Supplements

A weekly discount for longer stays, a short-break supplement for quick ones and a last-minute discount to fill empty nights.

No Commission, Ever

Guests pay you, not a platform. The theme is a one-time price and takes nothing from your bookings.

Extras on Their Own Lines

Cleaning, pets and extra guests are each their own invoice line, with a refundable security deposit returned after the stay.

146 Payment Gateways

Guests pay the deposit and the balance through PayPal, Stripe or any of 144 other gateways, straight into your own account.

Record Money Paid Another Way

A bank transfer, a cheque or cash on arrival is written down on the booking, so you always see what is still to pay.


Property Page

A Homepage That Sells Your Property

What you enter under My Property fills the design: your photos, rooms, amenities, facts and prices, not the sample cottage.

Photos and Rooms

Add photos, drag them into order and the first becomes the cover. Give one a room name and it becomes a room card on your homepage.

An Amenities List That Fits

Tick from kitchen, comfort, outside and practical groups, and add your own, like the boat mooring no list ships with.

Facts and Nearby Places

How many it sleeps, the bedrooms and bathrooms, and the pub, beach and station nearby, shown the way guests scan for them.

Prices From Your Own Rates

The design’s season price table and booking box read the seasons and rates you set, so the homepage never shows a sample price.

October
MTWTFSS12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031
November
MTWTFSS123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930
Booked on your site Booked elsewhere Owner staying

One Calendar, Wherever Guests Book

AirbnbBooking.comVrboGoogle Calendar

Two links keep every calendar in step. Give the platforms your calendar link so they stop selling nights booked on your site, and paste theirs in so their bookings block yours.

A failed sync never frees a night. If two bookings ever land on the same nights, you are warned straight away.


Guest Booking

A Page for Each Guest, a Screen for You

Guests see their dates, what is left to pay and how to find you. You see who is waiting on an answer, who is coming and what is owed.

Guests

Their Own Booking Page

You

My Property, in Your Admin

Every Booking, Handled Properly

Guests book without signing up, and you look after every stay from one screen.

A Private Booking Link

Each guest gets their own link to their booking: no account and no password, and it is in their email too.

The Whole Party

Adults, children, infants and pets are booked separately, so pet and extra-guest charges are priced properly. Infants are never counted.

Emails at Every Step

Guests hear when you have their request, when it is confirmed or declined, when their payment arrives and, the day after they leave, to ask how it went.

Change Dates Safely

Move a booking to new dates from your admin. The new nights are checked first, so it can never double-book you.

Your Private Notes

Keep a note on any booking, like where the key was left. Only you ever see it.

Cancel or Decline

Cancel a booking or decline a request and the guest is told, and those nights go straight back on sale.


Admin Tools

Your Property, Prices and Calendar in One Place

My Property keeps the details, pricing, calendar and bookings for your let on four plain screens.

See the live demo

Pricing

The nightly price, the weekly discount, the short-break supplement and the last-minute discount, with extras, the deposit, booking rules and seasons on their own tabs.

The Pricing screen under My Property

Calendar

Three months at a glance. Click or drag across nights to block them, with a reason only you see, such as Owner staying or Maintenance.

The Calendar screen under My Property

Sync With Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo

Give the platforms your own calendar link and paste theirs in. Their bookings block your nights, and yours block theirs, every half hour and whenever a guest starts to book.

The calendar sync settings with the site's own calendar link
Design tools

Design Your Property Pages

Site Generator

Start from one of the 15 designs and change any section in place, or connect your own AI account and describe your property to draft the words.

The Site Generator on the Thatch design

Logo & Brand Colours

Put your property's name, logo and colours on every page, checked in a live preview first.

The Brand page

Customisation

Your Property, Your Look

Make it feel like a cosy cottage, a beach house or a woodland lodge, whichever suits your guests.

Your Colours, Fonts & Logo

Set your brand colours and type, and the homepage, booking pages and emails all match.

Works with Elementor

Designing in Elementor? Drag the theme’s holiday-let blocks, like photo walls, room cards and availability tables, straight onto your Elementor pages.

Built-in page builder

Build Your Site Without Extra Plugins

Lay out your homepage, rooms, rates and guest book in the theme’s own editor, then go live.

Try the site editor

Built-In Essentials

Ready on Day One

Emails, translations and a ready-made design are already in place.

Automatic Emails

You hear about every new request and payment, and guests get their confirmation, receipts and booking link without you lifting a finger.

One-Click Demo Import

Load a ready-made design with sample rooms, rates and seasons, then swap in your own photos and prices.

Any Language

Welcome guests in their own language with 13 ready-made translations, from German to Japanese, or add another.

Works on Any Screen

Most holidays are found on a phone, so the photos, calendar, quote and payment are sized to fit.

Unlimited Installs

Own a cottage and a caravan? Give each its own website on the same licence.

Video Tutorials

Watch how to set up your property, prices and calendar sync in short video guides.


Compare

Your Own Site vs the Alternatives

There are two usual ways to let a holiday property: list it on a booking platform and give up a share of every stay, or rent a hosted booking website by the month.

PrivateLetBooking platformHosted rental software
Cost$99 one-timeFree to list$25–$80 / month
Commission per booking0%15–20% between guest and host0–3% + card fees
Monthly feesNoneNoneForever
Whose website is itYours, on your domainTheirsRented
Guest email addressesYours, in your databaseWithheldYours, on their server
Who ranks in GoogleYou doThey doYou do
Repeat guests book directYesDiscouragedYes
If you stop payingSite keeps workingListing removedSite goes offline
Unlimited installsYesN/APer property

Platform and software figures are typical category ranges, not quotes from any one provider. Check the current terms of whichever you are comparing.


Step by step

How to Build a Direct-Booking Website for Your Holiday Let

Five steps from an empty domain to a vacation rental website taking its own bookings. You need no WordPress knowledge, no booking plugin and no commission.

  1. 1

    Install WordPress and the PrivateLet Theme

    Any host that runs WordPress will do. Upload the theme, activate it and import the demo property. You start from a finished holiday-let site rather than a blank page. Free install and setup is included if you would rather we did it.

  2. 2

    Pick One of the 15 Designs

    Choose the one closest to your property, whether that's a country cottage, static caravan, lakeside lodge, villa, harbour apartment or seafront flat. Each is a complete homepage, not a wireframe, and swapping between them does not lose your content.

  3. 3

    Add Your Property

    In My Property, fill in the facts that sell a stay and answer the questions guests ask. That means bedrooms, bathrooms, how many it sleeps, arrival and departure times, whether the dog can come, house rules, directions and what there is to do nearby. Upload your photographs and tick your amenities. Then add any the list doesn't have, like a boat mooring or a pizza oven.

  4. 4

    Set Your Rates and Open Your Calendar

    Enter a standard nightly rate, then your seasons, your weekly discount, your cleaning and pet charges and your minimum stay. Block the weeks you are using it yourself, and the calendar is ready for guests.

  5. 5

    Take Bookings Direct

    Guests pick their dates, see an itemised quote and pay a deposit to secure the week. The money goes straight into your own payment account. You confirm, take the balance before arrival, and keep every penny of it.


FAQ

WordPress Vacation Rental Theme FAQ

Common questions from owners planning a direct-booking website.

It's a WordPress theme that turns an ordinary website into a booking website for a holiday property. PrivateLet is built for one property rather than a listings site. The photo gallery, availability calendar, nightly and seasonal rates, guest details and deposit-taking are all part of the theme. You install it, add your own property and start taking bookings. There is no separate booking plugin to buy, wire up or renew.

That's exactly what PrivateLet is. You get the parts of an Airbnb listing that actually sell a stay, such as a large photo gallery, sleeps-and-beds facts, an amenities list, guest reviews, a map and a date-and-guests booking box. But it's on your own domain, with your own brand, and no commission comes out of the booking. Guests who found you on a platform once can book with you directly ever after.

None. You buy the theme once and every booking taken on your site is yours in full. Take a property earning £20,000 a year. The 15–20% a booking platform typically takes between guest and host comes to £3,000–£4,000, and that is the whole argument for having your own site.

Either, and you choose. A holiday let is normally paid in parts, so PrivateLet models it that way. A deposit secures the dates, the balance is due before arrival, and the theme tracks what has been paid and what is still outstanding. A refundable security deposit can be added as its own line on the invoice.

Yes. You set a standard nightly rate and then as many seasons as you like on top of it. Seasons can be recurring. “Christmas” stored as 20 December to 2 January repeats every year, so you cannot accidentally sell Christmas week at the standard rate because you forgot to re-enter the dates. You can also add a weekly discount for stays of seven nights or more, a short-break surcharge under a set number of nights, and a last-minute discount inside a set number of days from arrival.

Yes, and the theme knows the difference. A blocked period carries a type, so your own calendar says “Owner staying” where a visitor simply sees that the dates are not available. Your calendar is both a sales tool and your own diary. Blocks are entered as arriving and leaving dates, so a week you drive home on is free for the next guest that same afternoon.

Most private lets still take bookings by phone, email and word of mouth, so you can enter one by hand. It is recorded the same way as an online booking, blocks the same nights and appears on the same calendar. There is only ever one place to look to know whether a week is free.

Yes. The 15 ready-made designs cover five kinds of property. Those are lodges and cabins, holiday cottages, static caravans, seafront and harbour apartments, and villas and sun apartments. A caravan on a park sells on the park as much as on the van, and a seafront flat sells on the lift, the parking bay and the balcony. Pick the design nearest your property and change the words and photos.

Yes. The theme is multilingual and multi-currency, and the designs are written for British cottages, caravans and self-catering lets as readily as for US and international rentals. Nightly prices, weekly prices, changeover days, arrival and departure times, pets, house rules and directions are all part of the property record.

No, and that is the point of the product. You import the demo property, then work in one admin screen called My Property. It has three tabs for the property, its pricing and its availability. There is no listings table to learn, no page builder to master and no plugin stack to assemble. If you want to redesign a page, every section is an Elementor block you can drag, but you never have to.

Those are monthly subscriptions, and you rent your website from them for as long as you let the property. PrivateLet is a WordPress theme you buy once and install on your own hosting, on a domain you own, with the guest data staying in your own database. There is no monthly fee, no per-booking fee and nothing to lose access to if you stop paying.

Very soon. All 15 designs are built, the booking engine is working, and the demo is live now. Try it and see exactly what you would be buying. The theme itself goes on sale once the download package is finished.

Still have a question?
Ask us anything about letting your property direct.
Contact us