How do you create a booking website for your holiday cottage?

A booking website for a holiday cottage (in France, a “gîte”) must reflect how a cottage is actually rented: by the week, Saturday to Saturday, in high season, as short breaks the rest of the year, with an end-of-stay clean, optional linen, the local tourist tax where it applies, and a calendar synchronised with the platforms where the cottage is also listed. With WordPress and GDA Kraft Booking, you set these rules up once; prices and availability are then calculated automatically. Here is a complete example setup.

The example used in this article

All values are fictitious: a 6-person, 3-bedroom holiday cottage in the countryside in France, also listed on Airbnb and Booking.com, open all year round and classified 3 stars. Adapt each value to your property, your market and, for the tourist tax, your local authority's decision.

What does a holiday cottage website need?

Step 1: create the accommodation and its seasons

In Kraft Booking › Accommodations › “+ Add accommodation”, create the cottage and save the form, then on the “Rates & seasons” tab set a rate plan (“Add a rate”) and seasons (“Add a season”). Example:

Each season has specific dates (“From”, “To”): recreate it or change its dates every year, as there is no automatic yearly repeat. The long-weekend season, with a higher “Priority”, overrides the spring season that contains it.

There is no separate weekly price: to make the week more attractive, create a tier in Promotions › “Length-of-stay discounts”, for example “From (nights)” 7 and “Discount (%)” 10; it applies to all seasons. Allowed check-in and check-out days are set for the whole accommodation, on the form's “05 Booking” tab, not season by season: requiring Saturdays therefore applies all year round. How seasons work is explained in full in Seasons and rates; for choosing amounts, see How do you set your prices?.

Also enter in the rate plan the “Adults included” (for example 4) and the “Surcharge/adult/night”, if your costs vary with group size.

Step 2: add cleaning and linen

On the form's “Services” tab:

The arguments for including or separating the cleaning fee are detailed in Cleaning fees and additional services.

Step 3: set up tourist tax

On the form's “Services” tab, “Tourist tax” panel, enter the “Amount / person / night” voted by your municipality and tick “Exempt children”, as the cottage in the example is classified 3 stars (fixed rate). The following applies in France only: the 2026 national scale sets a range of €0.50 to €1.70 for this category, and your municipality votes the exact rate (see How do you calculate tourist tax?). Outside France, whether a tourist tax applies and how it is calculated depend on the country and the municipality.

Fictitious example for a summer week, 4 adults and 2 children, municipal rate of €1.20:

If the booking is paid online, a “Service fee” line, paid by the guest, is added to the total: 0.9%, reduced to 0.45% until 30 June 2027.

Step 4: choose the payment mode

There are two ways of working:

• Without online payment: the guest sends a booking request, you confirm it, then record the deposit received by bank transfer or cheque (“Add an offline payment” in the booking file). No service fee.
• With online payment (Kraft Pay enabled, site linked to the free Kraft GDA account): the deposit is paid online by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, and the balance is charged automatically before arrival. For a cottage rented by the week, a 30% deposit and a balance 30 days before arrival are common settings, to be entered in the “Deposit and balance” panel of the “Rates & seasons” tab (see Take a deposit online).

Step 5: synchronise with the platforms

On the cottage's “Syncs” tab, add the calendar of each listing (Airbnb, Booking.com) with the “Add” button, then paste the cottage's “Outgoing feed” link into each platform; import runs automatically every 15 minutes. If cleaning cannot be done on the day of departure, set “Days blocked after each departure (cleaning)” on the “05 Booking” tab. Also align your rules: if the site requires Saturdays in summer, the platform listings should do the same, otherwise staggered stays will create orphan nights. See Preventing double bookings.

Step 6: build the pages

With your page builder (Gutenberg, Elementor or Divi 5; Bricks is announced as coming soon, and shortcodes work in the meantime), create a presentation page for the cottage with:

• photos, the description and, in France, the property's registration number (see Holiday let registration number);
• the availability calendar;
• the booking form;
• your cancellation terms and general terms and conditions.

GDA Kraft Booking is published by Global Digital Agency and is in public beta 0.1, with version 1.0 planned for June 2027: before opening bookings, make a complete test booking and check the price in the “Quote simulator” in Kraft Console (“Rates” view). You can sign up for the free account, needed to download the plugin, at /en/inscription.

Frequently asked questions

Can I require Saturdays in summer and accept any day the rest of the year?

Not automatically at present. Allowed check-in and check-out days are set for the whole accommodation (“05 Booking” tab), not per season. For the summer, a 7-night minimum stay in the season already limits short stays; you can also choose “On request” validation and only accept requests that start on a Saturday.

How do I handle a guest who books by phone?

Record it in Kraft Booking › Bookings › “＋ Add a booking”: the dates are blocked in the calendar, and on the platforms the next time they read your export. A payment received by bank transfer or cheque and recorded manually carries no fee.

Do I need an account to use the plugin for my cottage?

Not necessarily. GDA Kraft Booking is available for free on WordPress.org (Plugins › Add New Plugin, search for “GDA Kraft Booking”): this free core works without an account for a cottage that takes booking requests and is paid by bank transfer, but it has no online payment, appointment mode or Kraft Console. For online payment, install the complete GDA edition with a free Kraft GDA account, with no credit card: it is downloaded from the customer area (“Downloads”) and the site is linked to it in one click. This edition includes everything, online payment included: no add-on to install.

Is my cottage subject to tourist tax?

In France, only if your municipality or group of municipalities has introduced it, for the collection period it has set; the official Service Public simulator shows the rate applicable at your address. Outside France, check with your local authority.