Boat rental is an industry in which the customer wants to see the vessel, check a free date and book it without phone calls in the busy season. For Cross Travel in Bydgoszcz we built a separate electric boat booking service: boat.crosstravel.pl. It was built on WordPress and WooCommerce, with a custom rental plugin and payments via Przelewy24. In this case study we describe how an online boat rental with a calendar and season-dependent prices works.
In short: an online boat rental with booking
- Client: Cross Travel s.c., an electric boat rental (Boat Cross Travel)
- Industry: water tourism, equipment rental
- Scope: WordPress theme, a WooCommerce shop as the booking system, a rental plugin with a calendar and monthly prices, online payments, an accessibility panel, information pages
- Technologies: WordPress, WooCommerce, the ka_rent, ka_wcag and ka_cookie plugins, Przelewy24, Flatpickr
- Website: boat.crosstravel.pl
The challenge: hourly rental, not selling a product
A classic shop sells things, while a rental sells time, and that is a completely different order logic. The same boat is available on one date and not on another, the price depends on the month, and the customer expects the system not to allow booking an occupied slot. On top of that come things usually outside a shop: rental terms, information about the pick-up point, rules for transporting the boat to another body of water and the option to get in touch for longer charters. All of this has to be understandable for someone who is renting a boat for the first time and does not know the industry terms.
The rental therefore needed a website that:
- shows a fleet of four QX615 boats with a description of the equipment and photos,
- lets visitors choose rental dates and check availability at once,
- takes season-dependent prices into account,
- accepts online payments through a well-known gateway,
- complies with cookie requirements and is friendly to people who use accessibility aids.
How we worked on the project
- Analysis of the rental process: how the customer chooses a boat, date and payment, and what the rental does after a booking.
- Design and implementation: page layout, boat pages, a price table, integration with the WooCommerce cart.
- Rental plugin: the logic of dates, availability and price, adapted to the fact that billing is hourly.
- Testing: checking bookings on different devices and checking the order view.
The solution: a WooCommerce shop turned into a rental system
Instead of a ready-made plugin with a paid subscription, we prepared a solution on WooCommerce and our own rental plugin, ka_rent. The home page sets the mood, and every boat is a product with a calendar. The customer sees the whole process in the familiar shop pattern: product page, cart, order, account.
The whole service looks visually different from the travel agency’s website: it has a dark navy header, large photos of boats on the water and pill-shaped buttons. This is a conscious decision, because booking a boat is a purchase with emotions, and the customer should see the vessel before they start choosing a date. The menu is short and leads to four places: booking, location, projects and contact, and next to them are the account and cart, familiar from any shop.
The fleet and boat pages
The Booking tab shows four QX615 boats named Julita, Martyna, Sophie and Bertrand, each with a photo, a note about hourly billing and a “Book” button. A single boat’s page contains a gallery of thumbnails, a description of the model (an 8-person crew, a cabin with sleeping space for three people) and a full list of equipment: an echo sounder, electric drive, batteries, photovoltaic panels on the roof and rescue equipment.
Date calendar and availability control
On the boat page, the customer chooses dates in the “Date from” and “Date to” fields, which are handled by the Flatpickr calendar. The page displays availability information (the number of units available) and lets the customer add the rental to the cart. The plugin distinguishes between hourly and daily billing, and the price is recalculated once a date is selected. On the rental’s side, bookings go into WooCommerce orders, and the plugin also provides an event calendar view for the panel.
Seasonal prices by month
Each boat has a “Seasonal prices” table on its page: the hourly rate is assigned separately to each month, from January to December, so the rental can set a more expensive summer season and a cheaper period outside it. Rates are changed in the panel, without a developer. The plugin code also supports discount thresholds depending on the length of the rental, but whether and which thresholds are active is set by the rental. For larger orders, the website encourages visitors to get in touch.
Online payments, cart and account
The order goes through the standard WooCommerce process: the cart, the checkout page and the customer account. The project has the Przelewy24 payment gateway plugin installed, and a BLIK payment block is available on the checkout page. The available payment methods depend on the account configuration in the gateway, which is why we do not list them all.
In rental, time is the currency, so the price must be clear before the customer starts filling in fields. The table of months therefore sits next to the calendar, not in the terms at the end of the page. The customer sees that July costs differently from October and can choose a date knowingly instead of guessing how much they will pay in the cart.
Location, contact and co-financing
The Location page gives the area of operation (the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship), the information that the price does not include transporting the boat, and an invitation to get in touch for a charter longer than 7 days. The rental also has a contact page with a form, rental terms and a separate page about a project co-financed by European Union funds, which describes the introduction of an electric boat rental service.
In the Projects tab the rental shows a gallery with a video of an event organised on the Bydgoszcz Canal. This element does not sell directly, but it helps the customer picture the cruise and builds trust, because it shows the boats in use, not just in harbour photos.
Accessibility, cookies and security
- The ka_wcag accessibility panel: font size adjustment, a simple font, contrast modes, disabling animations, underlining links, a clearer keyboard focus, an enlarged interface and larger spacing.
- Cookies: a banner with a choice of categories (necessary, analytics, marketing) and links to policies, handled by the ka_cookie plugin.
- Terms and data: separate rental terms, a privacy policy and consent to data processing in the contact form.
SEO without promises
The website has readable page addresses and a separate product page for each boat, which organises the content well for search engines. The name and description of the electric boat rental appear in headings and in the content. The effectiveness of Google visibility depends, however, on regular publishing, the competition and customer reviews, so we do not promise specific positions.
Technologies used in the project
- WordPress and WooCommerce as the basis of the shop and orders,
- the custom ka_rent plugin (dates, availability, monthly prices, discounts, REST /rent/v1),
- Flatpickr for choosing dates,
- Przelewy24 as the payment gateway,
- ka_wcag and ka_cookie for accessibility and consents.
The website works together with the travel agency’s site: the “Book” buttons on the boat charter page on the main Cross Travel website lead straight to this service. This way the charter offer for companies and individual bookings use one coherent place of purchase.
The result: booking like in a shop, logic like in a rental
The rental got a service in which the customer can go from choosing a boat to ordering on their own, and the staff see bookings in the familiar orders panel. The seasonal price list and the calendar are part of the product page, and the information pages answer questions that would usually end in a phone call. We do not have access to booking statistics, so we give no numbers. The value shows in the way of working: rental data lives in one system, not in a spreadsheet and an email inbox. For the customer this means a simpler path, for the rental less manual work, and for us a base that can be developed, for example with more boats, new bodies of water or additional services.
Who this solution is for
A rental system on WooCommerce works well for rental firms hiring out boats, kayaks, bicycles, sports equipment and tools, and for venues that hire out resources by the hour or day. If you also run a travel agency alongside rental, you can pair it with a website like the Cross Travel travel agency website described in a separate case study.
Frequently asked questions about an online boat rental
How does boat booking work on the rental’s website?
The customer opens the page of the chosen boat, picks the start and end dates of the rental in the calendar, checks availability and adds the booking to the cart. From there they use the standard WooCommerce order process. The rental sees bookings in the panel, and the website also gives a phone number and email for people who prefer to arrange things directly.
Can a rental website use seasonal prices?
Yes. In the Cross Travel Boat project, each boat has a table of hourly rental rates assigned to months, from January to December. The rate depends on the date, so the rental changes prices in and out of season without editing code. In addition, the booking plugin has a mechanism for discount thresholds depending on the length of the rental.
What online payments does a boat rental shop support?
The website is based on WooCommerce with the Przelewy24 gateway plugin, which supports online payments, including a BLIK payment block. We always agree the configuration of payment methods with the client and the payment gateway, because it depends on the agreement with the operator.
Does a rental need its own booking system, or is a form enough?
A form is enough for a few bookings a week. As the number of dates and boats grows, a calendar with availability control saves time, because it eliminates double bookings and questions about free dates. That is why in this project booking is part of the shop, and contact by phone remains an additional option.
Can a rental website be accessible to people with disabilities?
It can and should be. The Cross Travel Boat website has an accessibility panel: font size change, contrast modes, disabling animations, underlining links and a clearer keyboard focus. This is our ka_wcag plugin. It does not replace correct page semantics, but it helps users adjust the appearance to their needs.
Online boat rental: WooCommerce booking instead of a spreadsheet
A rental sells time, not an item, so an ordinary shop is not enough: you need a calendar, availability control and prices that depend on the date. We solved this on WooCommerce with a custom plugin, so bookings go into the familiar orders panel. The client is Cross Travel from Bydgoszcz, and we describe the area of operation in the website’s content (the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship).
Lessons for equipment rental: show the price next to the calendar, describe transport and pick-up rules before the order, and decide whether a form is enough. General principles are described in the article on using WooCommerce in online shops, and tailor-made features, such as our rental plugin, are discussed in the text on custom WordPress plugins.
See also the Cross Travel travel agency website. Planning your own system? Write to us.
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