How to Use Lodgify & Squarespace to Create a Direct Booking Website

Squarespace is the website builder of choice for many because of their beautiful templates and intuitive website builder features.

But if you want to create a direct booking website for your vacation rental, you’ll need to integrate a third-party booking engine like Lodgify.

Combining the vacation rental management features of Lodgify with a Squarespace website is a great way to create a beautiful, customized direct booking website.

In this post, we’re covering two options for how to integrate Lodgify with your Squarespace website. We’ve also included real life example websites, so you can see what your end result could look like.

Lodgify vs. Squarespace

Comparing Lodgify and Squarespace is a lot like comparing apples to oranges. Yes, they are both website builders. But they are built with very different ends in mind. Lodgify is primarily a vacation rental management software platform, with a built-in website builder. Squarespace is primarily a website builder period.

Squarespace is meant to be used to create almost any kind of website imaginable, so it comes with a huge library of highly customizable templates, and the ability to integrate with tons of different services (e.g. Lodgify). Lodgify, on the other hand, is a much more basic website builder. The website builder is just one of several features they offer, including a direct booking engine, channel manager, and other features designed for short-term rental owners and property managers.

If you had to choose just one or the other, it would come down to whether you want to take direct bookings or not. If you don’t want direct bookings, you should use Squarespace. If you do, you should use Lodgify.

But the point of this post is that you can use them both.

Using Lodgify and Squarespace Together

Lodgify is actually one of the best vacation rental website builders available, but it definitely falls short compared to Squarespace in terms of template options and website builder features.

That said, if you find that the updated Lodgify template library suits your needs, then there may be no need for you to use Squarespace at all. You could keep everything in one place in your Lodgify account. Here are some examples of websites built with Lodgify, to give you an idea of what’s possible using just the Lodgify website builder.

But if you already have a Squarespace website, or you want to use a Squarespace vacation rental template, then Lodgify is a great way to add direct bookings and payments to your site.

There are at least two ways to do this:

Option 1: Add a ‘Book Now’ button to your Squarespace website that links to your Lodgify booking page.

Option 2: Embed a Lodgify Search Bar Booking Widget on your Squarespace website.

We’ve covered both options below, with example websites that illustrate each method.

Option 1: Add a ‘Book Now’ Button

This is probably the easiest way to add Lodgify and direct bookings to your Squarespace website. Simply add a ‘Book Now’ button that links to your Lodgify booking page.

The Tropic Shores Apartments website is an example of this. It’s common to see websites like this with a ‘Book Now’ button in the main menu that links to Airbnb or VRBO listings. In this case, the ‘Reserve Now’ button links to their property listings on Lodgify.

To do this, you simply need to create a Lodgify account, set up your properties (you can import them from Airbnb or VRBO), and then add the link to your Squarespace menu.

You can also add the link to buttons on pages, or anywhere else you want to have a ‘Book Now’ button on your website. It really doesn’t get much easier than this.

The Bees Nees website is another great example of combining Squarespace and Lodgify. They have a beautiful Squarespace website, and the “Reserve” buttons simply point to their Lodgify booking pages.

This option also applies to virtually any vacation rental booking engine with a basic website builder. For example, the website below has a ‘Book’ button that links to their Uplisting account in the same way.

Whether you go with Lodgify, Uplisting, or another booking engine, adding a ‘Book Now’ button that links to your listings is a very simple way to add direct bookings to your Squarespace website.

Option 2: Embed a Lodgify Search Bar Booking Widget

If you’re looking for a more integrated way to add Lodgify to your Squarespace site, you can use the Lodgify embedded Search Bar Booking Widget.

Rent Nosara is a beautiful example of a website that uses an embedded Lodgify Search Bar on their Squarespace website. You can enter check-in and check-out dates right on the homepage. The search results take you to their Lodgify website, which has been set up in a similar style as their Squarespace website.

You can follow these instructions on how to add a Lodgify Search Bar like this to an external website.

Summary & Getting Started

If you’re using Squarespace to create a website for your vacation rental, then Lodgify is a great option for handling direct bookings. You can easily add a ‘Book Now’ button that links to your listings, or you can go further and add a Search Bar so your visitors can search available properties right on your website.

If you’re ready to get started, you can go ahead and jump in with a free Squarespace trial and a free Lodgify trial.

Compare vacation rental software options with our spreadsheet.

View spreadsheet

We hope this information helps you get a better understanding of Lodgify Squarespace combo websites. If you have any questions, or you’re interested in a custom direct booking website, get in touch.

Additional resources:

• Best Vacation Rental Website Builders
• How to Create a Vacation Rental Website
• Vacation Rental Marketing Guide

Written by The Floorspace Team

This article was written as a collaborative effort by multiple members of the Floorspace team. We're a group of internet marketers and designers, with a wide range of experience marketing and managing short-term rentals.