Best Themes For Travel Websites

Themes That Capture the Spirit of Adventure:

Travel websites have been exploding in popularity since…well…there hasn’t really been a time when travel websites haven’t been popular. But since the inception of the smartphone era, people have wanted to read and blog about places they have been to.

People have either travelled somewhere new thanks to an Expedia sale, and want to know about great experiences they can have there, or they are researching where to go in the future. Either way, travel websites encompass a vast category of website. Will you blog about great restaurants to try in a certain place? The best beaches? The best trail rides for cyclists?

As vast a niche as ‘travel’ is, there are a few absolute musts when considering what your website will look like:

The 3 Musts of Travel Websites:

1. Your site must be responsive – choosing a website that is responsive to smartphone and tablet screens is an absolute must for travel blogs. Of all the category niches, a travel website is likely the category with the highest percentage of mobile users.
2. Keep it clean and fast loading – A lot of travellers will access your website while out of the country…which means they have to pay for the data they’re using. Keep your website clean and simple so that your website visitors feel comfortable coming back for more. No auto-loading videos!
3. Add extra value for your customers – anyone can write about a popular vacation spot. But what can you give your website visitors that no one else can give? One option is to give your customers discounts to local eateries. Coupontraveller.com is great for this: they have an promo code page for Expedia, so all their visitors can save on local hotels, tours and restaurants in that area.

1. Tour Package Theme

Best if you’re a tour company.

If you’re a local tour company looking to attract lots of curious visitors to your tour, you should try the Tour Package WordPress theme. It’s specifically designed for the novice website owner. There is a drag and drop webpage builder (like Weebly) to help you quickly and easily create webpages for your website without hiring a designer. It has individual ‘tour packages’ that you can feature on your site and price differently. Your customers can also book their trips directly online (instead of phoning you), and the theme itself was recently updated to allow your website’s visitors to use Paypal to pay for their trips online.

Get This Theme If:

This theme is great if you’re a small or medium sized tour company that wants to focus on taking people on tours instead of fiddling with a website all day. The whole process is easy to set up, and after that the tour bookings are all automated.

Don’t Get This Theme If:

This is, as the name suggests, specifically created for tour companies. So if you’re a travel blogger looking for a blog, this isn’t for you. Let’s keep reading.

2. Arctica Theme for WordPress

Great For Travel Bloggers

This is hands down the best overall WordPress theme if you’re a travel blogger. Why? The theme is fast, responsive, clean, and almost infinitely customizable. This means that, once you set up the theme to look the way you want, you can literally blog from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop and focus entirely on the content. Your website visitors will appreciate the beautiful but responsive look and feel of your website. The customizability will make your website distinctively yours, but you won’t need to spend time and money making it that way.

The only downside is that all the website’s cool customization features are mostly created through shortcodes, which will take a little bit of knowledge to implement. The theme developers do have a hugely helpful documentation file (we’ll link it here in case you can’t find it). But if you’re really new to these things, then it might be daunting.

Get This Theme If:

You’re a travel blogger who wants your website to look cool, but still be simple enough to work on all devices. Basically, you want to be able to set it up once and then focus on writing content.

Don’t Get This Theme If:

You are super-new to WordPress and aren’t comfortable setting up a website by yourself. It has sliders, shortcodes, and lots of features that will scare away any website-newbies.

3. Sahifa WordPress Theme

Sahifa isn’t specifically a ‘travel theme’, but there’s a reason it’s the bestselling theme on Themeforest’s website. It’s a responsive WordPress theme that is easy to use and does everything well. Technically it’s a blog/magazine theme, but it works really well as any kind of personal blog. It is retina-ready, responsive, and fast as heck. With this theme you can focus entirely on writing.

Get This Theme if:

You just want a website where you can install theme, upload a banner and then starting writing within 10 minutes. Installing ads, analytics, and all that are handled within the theme.

Don’t Get This Theme if:

You’re looking for a theme for your hotel, tour company or other travel business. Other themes will have specific modules and capabilities that Sahifa isn’t meant for.