Migrating a rigid Hostaway site into a faster WordPress booking platform
Givendale Cottages had a beautiful offline product, but the old Hostaway website limited SEO, usability and content growth. We rebuilt the platform in WordPress while keeping booking functionality intact.
The problem was not the cottages. It was the platform.
Givendale Cottages had the product, location and brand story. What held the website back was a rigid Hostaway setup that limited search control, page quality and user experience.
Hostaway was built for bookings, not SEO growth.
The original platform handled availability and bookings, but gave limited control over metadata, internal linking, content hierarchy and page-level optimisation.
Search engines struggled to prioritise key pages.
Templated layouts, limited crawl control and inconsistent indexation made it harder for Google to understand which pages mattered most.
We migrated the site to WordPress without breaking bookings.
The strategy focused on giving the website full SEO and UX flexibility while maintaining Hostaway as the booking engine behind the scenes.
- Moved the front-end website from Hostaway into a flexible WordPress build.
- Retained Hostaway integration for availability, pricing and booking functionality.
- Rebuilt the page hierarchy around cottages, locations, stay types and visitor intent.
- Improved crawlability, indexation and internal linking across core pages.
From rigid booking site to SEO-ready holiday cottage platform.
The rebuild created a site that looks better, performs better and gives the business room to grow its organic visibility through location and guide-led content.
Page structure became much clearer.
The new WordPress setup gave each cottage, location and supporting page a cleaner role within the wider site architecture.
User journeys were rebuilt around bookings.
Navigation, calls to action and page layouts were redesigned to help visitors move from discovery to enquiry or booking more naturally.
Technical SEO foundations were cleaned up.
URL structure, crawlability, page speed and indexation were improved so Google could better understand and prioritise the important pages.
The site became scalable for content growth.
The new build made it possible to add visitor guides, local landing pages and seasonal content without being trapped inside a rigid booking template.
Stuck on a rigid booking platform? Your website can still grow.
If your booking system works but your website does not rank, convert or scale, we can help rebuild the front-end around SEO and user experience without disrupting your operations.
Book a strategy call