Website Design · Saint-Tropez
Designing a direct-booking website for a Saint-Tropez rental
A villa or village house in the Gulf sells most of its weeks to people who already know the place: the Munich family back every July and the Swiss couple who take the same terrace for Les Voiles. Your site is where those repeat guests book without a platform fee, and in Saint-Tropez it has three jobs on one screen. It reads naturally in your guests' languages, it carries the registration number and tourist-tax line the mairie and EU law expect, and it answers the logistics worry every Gulf guest has, which is how long the port and the beach take in August. A direct-booking website built around those three jobs keeps your returning guests off the platforms.
Who a Saint-Tropez site speaks to, and in which languages
Var Tourisme's summer review, presented in Toulon on 16 September 2025, counted 61.9 million overnight stays across the Var from January to August. French stays slipped 3%, while foreign stays rose 6% on 2023, led by Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States. That order is your language plan. French comes first, for domestic guests and because the mairie and tourist office work in it, then English for the British and American bookers, then German, which also reaches Zurich and Basel, then Dutch. Give each language its own URL with hreflang tags, written by a native speaker; an automatic translation layer gives search engines nothing to rank in German or Dutch. Quote and charge in euros, and label any CHF, £ or US$ figure as an estimate. These guests compare you with the hotels on the Route des Plages, so the first screen shows the total for their dates, how many cars fit in the drive, whether the pool is heated in May and the minutes to the port.
What a Saint-Tropez rental site must show by law
Saint-Tropez wants a declaration to the mairie for every furnished tourist rental, main home or second home, filed online through Déclaloc, and the 13-digit registration number it returns is compulsory on every advert. Your website is an advert, so put the number in the footer and next to the price on each property page. A second home, or a main home let more than 120 days a year, also needs a change-of-use request. Check which commune you're in: Pampelonne's 4.5 km of sand lie in Ramatuelle (83350), and Gassin is its own commune, each with its own number and tax grid. Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 has applied since 20 May 2026, making Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo show your number and report your activity monthly, and France's national registration service, planned for the fourth quarter of 2026, will replace commune numbers after a transition of several months, so change the number on the site and every listing on the same day. The taxe de séjour goes inside the total. For an unclassified rental, Saint-Tropez charges 5% of the nightly price per person before tax, capped at €4.80, plus a 10% Var surcharge and a 34% surcharge for the new Provence–Côte d'Azur rail line; minors are exempt, and 2026 rates match 2025. Platforms collect it on their bookings; on a direct booking you collect it, declare the nights on the commune's portal before the 15th of the following month and pay quarterly. French consumer law, enforced by the DGCCRF, gives no withdrawal right on a stay booked for fixed dates, so print your cancellation terms beside the Book button. Cookies fall under the GDPR, enforced by the CNIL: refusing must be as easy as accepting, and no analytics tag fires before a yes. Confirm each point with the mairie and a French lawyer before launch.
Pages and photos that sell a Gulf stay
Guests search the Gulf by place name, so give each area your house can fairly claim its own page: the old village and La Ponche, Place des Lices, the Baie des Canoubiers, Les Salins, Pampelonne and Tahiti, Les Parcs de Saint-Tropez, and the hill villages of Gassin and Ramatuelle. Then write a getting-here page that solves the summer traffic. The nearest mainline stations are Saint-Raphaël–Valescure and Toulon, the long-haul airport is Nice Côte d'Azur with Toulon-Hyères closer on the western side, and the Bateaux Verts shuttle crosses from Sainte-Maxime in about 20 minutes, so a guest who parks on the far shore reaches the port without the coast road. The property page answers what Gulf guests filter on: air conditioning in each bedroom, shade over the pool and terrace, parking spaces, the walk to the port, the drive to Pampelonne in May and in August, a landing spot for a yacht tender, and how far the beach-club music carries at night. Shoot the photos to match: the gate and drive, the terrace view at noon and dusk, the shaded pool, each bedroom with its bed size in the caption, and the route to the port. The GEO section below covers how assistants read those pages.
