How a Savannah vacation rental brand went from invisible to booked out

When Cora Bett Thomas Rentals came to beterdesign, the business was running on Escapia — the industry’s standard property management platform — and nothing else. No brand presence. No destination feel. Just listings. In a city like Savannah, that’s leaving money on the table.

Savannah, Georgia is a city that sells itself to anyone who has ever walked its squares. Live oaks, Spanish moss, the river at sunset, one of the most atmospheric historic districts in the United States. The city does the marketing. The problem was that none of that feeling was anywhere in the online experience when guests were deciding where to book.

The brief

Cora needed two things that usually pull in opposite directions: a site that felt as beautiful as Savannah looks, and a booking flow so simple that a guest on their phone could find and book a vacation rental in two or three clicks.

Most rental sites get the second part right and ignore the first. A handful get the first part right and make booking painful. We wanted both.

What we did

• Built a brand presence rooted in the city itself — color, photography, typography all drawn from Savannah’s historic district
• Designed the entire site to breathe with the feel of the place, rather than feel like a property management dashboard
• Used Finsweet components to build a rental database that handles thousands of weekly visitors without friction
• Designed the vacation rentals page — now the highest-traffic page on the site — so a guest can filter and land on their dream rental in two or three clicks
• Recommended a social media strategy to pair with the site, and helped wire the two together

The outcome

The site went live in four weeks. Bookings rose meaningfully after launch. After Cora took our recommendation and added a social media campaign that linked back to the site, the growth accelerated again — guests were finding Savannah on Instagram and converting on the rentals page within minutes.

The difference between Cora’s site and most of her competitors isn’t that it’s prettier, though it is. It’s that it removes every unnecessary obstacle between curiosity and booking. Two clicks from landing page to dream rental is hard to beat.

In her words

Despite the big age difference, I felt the enthusiasm and the idea that carried us through the process. In just four weeks the site was done. Hats off to the team — and Savannah is waiting for you. Free of charge, of course.

See the site at corabettthomasrentals.com.