A vacation rental website, from the drive in to lights out
On Airbnb or Vrbo, your place is a thumbnail, a star rating and a nightly rate, laid out exactly like the listing next to it. When someone wants more before booking for the family, they search the property’s name. What they find is your own website.
Forest tells your rental as one day there, in six of your own photos: the house from outside, four moments of the day and the place at night with the lights on. Each photo becomes a 3D image the camera moves gently into as the page scrolls, and the light shifts with the hour of each moment. Your words sit over them — getting there, where everyone sleeps, what the afternoons are for, what the nights are like.
It ends on a card with your rate and a button to wherever you already take bookings. The site holds no calendar and takes no payments: it shows the place and sends guests off to book.
What your site shows
The house from outside
The page opens on your first photo: the house from outside, ideally in morning light. Over it sit the property’s name, your headline and a line with what people look for first: how many it sleeps, where it is, whether they get the whole place.
Arriving
The first moment goes with a photo of the way in — the porch, the front door, the yard where cars pull up. This is where arrival goes: the final stretch of track, where to park, how the key safe works.
Inside
With your photo of the living room or the kitchen, the camera moves into the room. Give it what the group will ask: how many bedrooms and beds, whether the table seats everyone, whether there’s a wood burner and logs.
Afternoons outside
The third photo is the outdoors mid-afternoon: the pool, the garden, the barbecue. In the text, what there is to do without the car — the river the children paddle in, the walk that starts at the gate.
The last of the sun
The fourth moment is the veranda or the view as the sun goes down; give it an evening hour and the photo’s light turns warmer. Describe how days end there: the long dinner, the fire going, how quiet it gets.
The booking card, at night
Your last photo — the house after dark, lights on — sits under the card: your rate from, per night or per stay, the arrival time, the minimum stay and how many it sleeps. The button opens your listing, your booking page or a WhatsApp chat. Anything left blank simply isn’t shown.
Have this ready
- Six photos of the place, all six needed: outside, the way in, the living room or kitchen, the outdoors in the afternoon, the veranda at sunset and the house at night with the lights on. Landscape or portrait, at least 1,600 px on the long side.
- The property’s name and a short tagline: it sits above your headline and goes into the page title that Google reads.
- A sentence or two on the place: where it is, how many it sleeps, whole house or rooms.
- Four moments from a day there, each with a time, a title and a few lines to go with its photo.
- For the card: your starting rate, what it’s per, the arrival time, the minimum stay and the number of guests.
- Your booking link: the Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com listing, your direct booking page, or a wa.me WhatsApp link.
- Your registration or licence number, if your area requires it on adverts, and a few lines on who looks after the place, for the footer.
- Email, phone, address, legal name and tax number: the details for the legal notice that comes with the site.
Worth knowing
Show your licence number where it’s required
Some regions require a holiday let’s registration or licence number on every advert, your own website included. Check the rule where you are. If it applies to you, add the number to the lines about who runs the place, which sit in the footer.
Put the house rules before the button
The line under the booking title is yours to write. Use it for what guests should know before they click: minimum nights at weekends, the deposit, dogs or no dogs. Better read there than in an awkward message later.
Something near, something far
The 3D shows best in a photo with a foreground and a distance: a chair on the veranda with the fields behind, a hallway opening onto the living room. A front wall shot straight on, with nothing before it, stays almost flat; for the opening, step back and let the path, a tree or the gate into the frame.
Shoot the night photo at dusk
For the last photo, switch every light on and take it while there’s still some colour in the sky, a little after sunset. In full dark the sky comes out black and the windows tend to blow out.
Questions
- Is the house on screen really mine?
- Yes: it’s your six photos, each turned into a 3D image from the depth worked out in it. It isn’t a model of the house to walk around inside — the camera moves a little way into each photo, then on to the next, so people see what your photos show, no more and no less.
- Do my photos get uploaded? How long does the 3D take?
- Nothing is uploaded: it all happens in your browser. Each photo is scaled to 2,048 px at most and saved again, which strips the location a phone stores in it. The first photo brings the depth model from promti.app, about 46 MB, once; on a recent computer all six are ready in seconds, and without WebGPU each takes around 4–5 seconds.
- I don’t have good photos of the place. What then?
- All six are needed to buy, and the 3D doesn’t rescue a dark or shaky photo: it stays that way, with depth. A phone is enough on a clear day with the house tidied. If a photographer took them for your listing, use the original files rather than copies saved from the listing, and check the agreement covers your own website.
- Can I change the photos or rates later?
- Yes, without paying again. Open the wizard in the same browser — your answers and photos are still there — swap whichever needs it, the pool in summer, the fire in winter, or change the seasonal rate, and download again. You publish it the same way as the first time: drag the folder into your Cloudflare project.
- I let rooms, not the whole house. Does it still work?
- Yes. The card says whatever you type: a rate per room per night, guests per room. The moments can show different rooms, each with its own photo and words, and the button can open the page where people choose one.