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Holiday homes in Marbella, booked directly, and run by the owners from one back office.

A custom WordPress theme, my own booking plugin, a guest portal and an owner back office in React, in six languages. Designed together, as one product.

Start the day 09:00
The garden of the apartments, the pool and the sea at Marbella
Role
Product design and WordPress development
Made at
Cloudari, the agency I work with
Built with
Figma, WordPress, PHP, React
Status
Installed, pre-launch
What I did
The home page of Vacations Costa del Sol on a computer: the coast in a photograph and the search bar
The home page on a phone
The home page, with sample apartments while the owners prepare their own

09:00 Morning

The brief, before anyone books.

Vacations Costa del Sol rents design-led holiday apartments in Marbella. They wanted their own website to take bookings directly, without platform commissions, and to run them without a technical team.

A holiday-rental site has two audiences. Guests, many from abroad, need to fall for the place, see real prices for their dates and book with confidence. The owners need to see what needs doing today, confirm payments, block dates, change prices by season and update photos and copy, without touching WordPress.

That ruled out a page builder and an off-the-shelf booking plugin.

Next hour 13:00
The pools between the palms, from the home page’s 9 o’clock

13:00 Midday

A brand and a theme, made for each other.

  • A design system for the brand: whitewash, sage and sky grounds, palm-green actions and sea-blue details, with Playfair headlines, Cormorant Garamond italics and Satoshi for the interface, all free fonts served from the site itself.
  • A custom WordPress theme with no page builder. The home page tells a day in Marbella hour by hour, from the first swim to dinner on the terrace, and each hour links to the homes that have it.
Next hour 18:00
A wooden bridge through the gardens, from the home page’s 1 o’clock

18:00 Evening

Booked directly, in one form.

  • Apartment pages with a full-screen gallery, rooms, amenities, house rules, location and a booking card that shows the real price for the chosen dates.
  • My own booking plugin: availability, seasonal rates and minimum stays, a one-form checkout, payment by bank transfer with a hold period and reminders, and the emails for every step.
  • A guest portal where guests see their bookings, the status of their payment and their arrival information.
The list of apartments with the date search
1Search by dates
An apartment page with its gallery
2The apartment
The one-form checkout with the booking summary
3One form, and it is booked

21:00 Night

The owners’ day, in one back office.

VCS Studio, built in React inside wp-admin: what needs doing today, bookings, a calendar with blocked dates, apartments and photos, prices by season, guests, messages, a visual editor for the site, email texts and settings. Shown with sample data.

Dinner set on the terrace, from the home page’s 9 o’clock at night
  • VCS Studio, Today: transfers to check, holds about to expire and this week’s arrivalsToday
  • The calendar of every apartment, with bookings and blocked datesCalendar
  • Prices per night for each apartment in each seasonPrices by season
  • One booking, with its payment and the guest’s detailsA booking

Six languages, one apartment.

Spanish, English, German, French, Dutch and Swedish, with translated addresses and content.

  • The apartment page in SpanishES
  • The apartment page in EnglishEN
  • The apartment page in GermanDE
  • The apartment page in FrenchFR
  • The apartment page in DutchNL
  • The apartment page in SwedishSV

The result, so far.

The site is installed on the client’s domain with sample apartments while they prepare their own homes, photos and legal texts. It isn’t open to guests yet, so I don’t quote any bookings or figures.

Vacations Costa del Sol

Marbella, Costa del Sol

Status
Installed, pre-launch
Commission per booking
None, once live
Day to day
VCS Studio
Made at
Cloudari
Upwork review
None, an agency project

DeliveredOne product

Site, booking engine and back office, designed together.

Tell me what you need the site to do. I’ll show you how I’d approach it.

Hire me on Upwork

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Not on Upwork? Write to me at davidestrada.work@gmail.com