Show what's open
Let guests search their dates and see only the homes they can actually book.
A website that keeps growing with the business
Coast & Range Vacations: Direct Booking Website & Vacation Rental SEO
We built Coast & Range their own direct booking website, then stayed on. Two years later it searches live availability, shows the full price up front and keeps adding local pages that bring guests in from Google.
Results at
a glance.
0.8s
Load time, held month after month
0%
Commission on direct bookings
15
Homes across Florida and Georgia
493
Guest reviews on their own site
Client overview
About Coast & Range Vacations
Coast & Range is a boutique short-term and monthly rental and property management company, with homes on the Gulf coast in Fort Myers Beach and Cape Coral and in the north Georgia mountains in Clayton.
They had the hard part solved: carefully chosen homes, happy guests and a place in Airbnb's top 1%.
The challenge
Why they needed a direct booking website
At the start they had nothing of their own. Every booking, guest and review sat on someone else's platform.
- No website; the whole business lived on booking platforms
- Templated rental builders tried and dropped for clunky design and weak SEO
- Guest emails and reviews owned by the platforms, not the brand
- Commission taken out of every stay
- Nothing showing up in local search for the towns they rent in
What changed
Two years later, the vacation rental world changed
A website isn't set it and forget it. In the two years after launch, Coast & Range added more homes, more monthly stays and a second state, and the vacation rental world moved too.
- Airbnb moved to a single host-paid fee of about 15.5%, so every platform booking costs the owner more
- Guests now expect the full price up front, and US rules on hidden fees push every rental site the same way
- Travelers search by their dates first and skip anything they can't check is available
- Google rewards local, useful pages over thin listings
So the site kept growing with them.
The roadblocks
Building custom tools around Hostaway
Coast & Range runs on Hostaway, a property management system (PMS) that keeps their calendars, rates and bookings in sync across Airbnb, Vrbo and their own website. It does a lot well, but out of the box it couldn't give them the guest experience they wanted:
- Its ready-made search sent guests away to a separate booking site
- Prices for a guest's dates only appeared at checkout
- The website couldn't tell guests which homes were open for their dates
So we built around it. Our custom tools read Hostaway's live calendars and rates, keep guests on Coast & Range's own website while they browse, and only hand off to Hostaway's secure checkout at the very end, with their dates and guests already filled in.
The brief
What the vacation rental site needed next.
Show the real price
The full total, fees included, before checkout, not after.
Make booking direct easy
A clear path from any page to the booking calendar, on every phone.
Get found locally
Pages for the towns, beaches and things to do that guests search for.
Solutions
What Tamara & Co. built.
Direct booking website
A custom WordPress site that takes the booking and keeps the guest, with no commission on direct stays.
User flow mapped first
The route from landing to booking was mapped before any visual decisions: pick a region, pick a home, get answers, book.
Fast, mobile-first build
Tuned to a 0.8-second load and built mobile-first, because most guests browse on a phone.
Town landing pages
Pages for Fort Myers Beach and Clayton, GA, so each region ranks on its own.
SEO structure on every page
Clear headings, vacation rental schema and full photo galleries Google can read.
Reviews on their own domain
Verified guest reviews shown on their own site, where they build trust and search.
Since launch
Two years in: new booking features and SEO.
Custom-built availability search
Our own search tool, connected to Hostaway: guests pick dates, guests, pets and Florida or Georgia, and see only the homes that are open, synced every hour.
See it →Map and list results
Results show on a map beside the homes, with open homes first and monthly stays right after.
The full price up front
The booking box pulls the exact total for the guest's dates from Hostaway, fees included, so there are no surprises at checkout.
Booking calendar moved up
The calendar now sits right after the home's description instead of at the bottom of the page.
Floating Book Now
A "Best Rate Guaranteed" seal follows guests down the page and jumps to the calendar when they're ready.
Monthly stays, clearly marked
Monthly homes carry a "Monthly Rental" label with their minimum stay, for snowbirds and longer visits.
New local pages every month
A growing library of local area pages for the beaches, towns and things to do near each home, added month by month.
See it →Every photo found by Google
Full photo galleries now show in the sitemap and listing schema, not just one image per home.
Care and SEO, every month
Updates, backups, speed checks and Search Console reviews every month, so the site keeps up as the business grows.
See it →Inside the build
Inside the Coast & Range direct booking site.
Custom-built search
Only the homes that are open.
Results come straight from Hostaway's live calendars, with the count for the guest's dates and every home pinned on the map.
Reviews and regions
Proof first, then pick a coast or the mountains.
Hundreds of verified guest reviews right under the search, then Florida and Georgia side by side.
How it was built
From launch to ongoing care and SEO.
- 01
Build
A custom direct booking website, mapped around how guests choose and book a home.
- 02
Care
Monthly updates, backups and speed checks, so it stays fast and safe after launch.
- 03
Grow
SEO structure, location pages and schema, guided by what guests search in Google.
- 04
Convert
Live search, up-front prices and an easier path to book, as guest expectations changed.
The results
- Their own booking channel, with 0% commission on every direct stay.
- Custom-built search and pricing on top of Hostaway, so guests stay on the site until checkout.
- 15 homes in Fort Myers Beach, Cape Coral and Clayton, GA under one brand.
- 493 guest reviews shown on their own website.
- 0.8s load time, held month after month on the care plan.
- Local pages added every month, building search traffic they own.
★★★★★
Lauren McCabe, Coast & Range Vacations · Google reviewTamara is a consummate professional and I highly recommend working with her company. It was clear from our initial discovery call that she had a deep knowledge of my industry… She made excellent suggestions for site functionality, recommended capabilities that I didn't even know were available, and focused on building an optimized site from the ground up. When I threw curve-balls during site build-out, she handled them with ease.
Questions
Hostaway direct booking website FAQs
Is a website ever finished?
Not really. Coast & Range launched with a direct booking site, then added live search, up-front pricing and local pages as the business and the rental world changed. That's why we stay on with Website Care and vacation rental SEO after launch.
Do they still use Airbnb and Vrbo?
Yes. The platforms bring new guests; the website gives returning guests and searchers a way to book direct, with no platform fee.
They use Hostaway. Does that limit the website?
Out of the box, a little: Hostaway's own search sends guests to a separate booking site, and prices only show at checkout. We built custom tools that read Hostaway's live calendars and rates, so guests search and see prices on Coast & Range's own site, then check out securely through Hostaway.
How does the search know what's open?
It reads the same calendars Coast & Range uses to manage bookings and refreshes every hour, so guests only see homes they can actually book.
Why show the full price before checkout?
Surprise fees are a top reason guests abandon a booking. Showing the total up front builds trust and keeps them on the site.
What do the local pages do?
They answer what guests search before they book (beaches, towns, things to do) and link to the homes nearby, so the site shows up earlier in the trip planning.
Can you do this for my rentals?
Yes, whether you use Hostaway or another PMS. See our direct booking websites and custom plugins, or tell us about your rentals.
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