Case study · Web design & booking · Romania

Apuseni Peak Paradise

Two A-frame cabins, one booking engine

High in the Apuseni Mountains at 917 metres, Apuseni Peak Paradise rents two design A-frame cabins — Black Wolf and Savage Samurai — with a jacuzzi, a sauna and a valley that runs to the horizon. The stay sells itself. What it needed was a site as considered as the cabins, and a booking engine that takes the reservation, the payment and the invoice while the owners sleep. Cittago designed and built both — then, through August and September 2026, rebuilt the whole thing again.

apusenipeakparadise.ro after the 2026 redesign — the site and its booking engine on desktop and mobile

Client: Apuseni Peak Paradise
Type: Web Design & Booking Engine
Location: Sălciua, Apuseni Mountains · 917m
Platform: WordPress · Elementor Pro
Live: apusenipeakparadise.ro ↗

The challenge

A view like this deserves more than a phone number.

People choose a mountain escape on a phone, late, scrolling between tabs. Apuseni Peak Paradise had the rare part sorted — two architect A-frames, a jacuzzi open to the ridgeline, a sauna, a glass-walled pavilion for a hundred guests. What it didn't have was a way to turn that late-night scroll into a confirmed, paid booking without handing 15–20% to a listing platform on every stay.

So the site had to do two jobs at once. Look premium enough to justify the price in three seconds — and quietly run like a reception desk underneath: two cabins on one calendar, seasonal rates, minimum stays, a card payment, an invoice, a confirmation email. All without a full-time booking manager, and all editable by the owners themselves.

Inside the A-frame — the glass gable framing the Apuseni valley

The cabin and its terrace, open to the mountain ridgeline

What we built

A cabin site that takes its own bookings

We built a light, image-led site that leads with the thing people are buying — the A-frame framing the valley, the jacuzzi under an open sky, the sauna, the terrace. Clean typography, fast on a phone, and honest about what each cabin is. Underneath it, a real reservation engine: a live availability calendar, rates that shift by season and weekday, packages and coupons, minimum-stay rules, and payment by card or bank transfer.

Then we did it again. Through August and September 2026 the site was rebuilt page by page around one shared design system and a single hero component — so the homepage, both landing pages, both cabins, the gallery, the rates page and the reservation flow now speak with one voice instead of nine. Every page carries a booking card above the fold, and the whole thing still runs on Elementor Pro, so the owners change a price, block a weekend or add an offer themselves.

Two cabins, a jacuzzi and a sauna — the stay, in three frames

Before / after

The same two cabins. A different business.

Drag the handle. On the left is the site as it was; on the right is the same page after the 2026 rebuild. Nothing about the property changed — only what a visitor meets in the first three seconds, and how far they are from a confirmed booking.

The redesigned homepage — a full-bleed photograph of the A-frame at dusk, with a live availability card and a row of trust facts — The homepageA brochure became a reception desk: the first screen now answers "what is this" and "is it free on my dates" at the same time.

The old Apuseni Peak Paradise homepage — a centred title on white, with three outline buttons and no way to check dates — The homepageA brochure became a reception desk: the first screen now answers "what is this" and "is it free on my dates" at the same time.

The rebuilt availability calendars — both cabins side by side, so a booked cabin no longer hides the free one — The availability calendarThe old calendar showed one cabin at a time, so a weekend where Black Wolf was taken read as "no" even with Savage Samurai free. Both are on screen now — and the nightly price it used to print had already been overtaken by the real tariff.

The old availability calendar — a single calendar for one cabin, with a nightly price printed on every date — The availability calendarThe old calendar showed one cabin at a time, so a weekend where Black Wolf was taken read as "no" even with Savage Samurai free. Both are on screen now — and the nightly price it used to print had already been overtaken by the real tariff.

The "before" frames are the screenshots we published about this project in August 2026, before the rebuild. We kept the originals rather than reconstructing anything, and cropped both halves identically — a comparison is only worth making if both sides are real.

Three surfaces, three jobs

One property, three ways in.

A cabin rental does not have one audience. Someone who searched your name wants to browse; someone who clicked an ad wants a price; someone planning a wedding wants to know whether a hundred people fit. Each gets its own page, and each page is built for the question it is actually being asked.

The redesigned homepage below the fold — the two cabins presented side by side with their rates

The homepage, below the fold — two cabins, one calendar

The site

Nine pages, one design system

The rebuild put every page on the same foundation: one hero component, one navigation, one set of colours and one typeface served from the server rather than fetched from Google. Change the header once and it changes on the homepage, both cabins, the gallery, the rates page, the reservation flow and both landing pages.

That sounds like housekeeping. It is really what makes the site cheap to run: a price change or a new photo is one edit, not nine, and nothing drifts out of style between them.

A single shared hero across nine page types — promise, trust strip and booking card can never drift apart
An availability search above the fold, searching both cabins at once
Rates, photo slider and video reel as global templates — edited once, updated everywhere
Fonts served locally, so no third-party request blocks the first paint

See it live

The availability section of the /lp landing page — a live calendar for each of the two cabins, side by side

Both cabins, one screen — availability answered in a glance

The ad landing page

/lp — built for a click someone paid for

Paid traffic does not browse. It arrives with one question and a very short temper, so the landing page is stripped to the shortest honest path: what this is, what it costs, is it free, book it. The navigation scrolls to sections on the same page instead of sending anyone away, and the availability calendars for both cabins sit side by side, so nobody has to check them one at a time.

It shares the site's design system, so it never feels like a page from somewhere else — but it is a separate page with a separate job, and the owners can clone it for the next campaign without a developer.

In-page navigation — no exits from a page you paid to land on
Both cabins' live calendars side by side, not one at a time
30% deposit, card confirmation in 2–3 minutes
Clonable on Elementor Pro for the next offer

See it live

The events page — a venue that was invisible until it had a page

The events landing page

/lp-evenimente — a second business on the same mountain

The property has a 60 m² pavilion and a 90 m² glass-walled terrace that join into one 150 m² hall. That is a wedding venue hiding inside a cabin rental, and it was invisible to anyone who wasn't already a guest. So it got its own landing page, with its own headline, its own proof and its own enquiry form.

The offer is deliberately legible: the whole location for a weekend, both cabins included, plus a flat amount per guest. No hall hire, no per-hour clock, no corkage. One event per day, which is the actual selling point — you are not sharing the mountain with anybody.

Up to 100 guests, one event per day
60 m² pavilion + 90 m² glass terrace = a 150 m² hall
16 beds on site, so the party does not have to drive home
Weddings, civil ceremonies and christenings, each addressed by name

See it live

A closer look

The rebuilt site, page by page

Every frame below is a screenshot of the live site, captured at the width it was designed for — not a mockup.

The Apuseni Peak Paradise homepage after the redesign — The homepage — photograph, booking card and the facts that answer the first objection

The /lp landing page on apusenipeakparadise.ro — The ad landing page — the same language, a shorter path

The events pricing section — both cabins for the weekend plus a per-guest amount — How an event is priced — both cabins, plus a flat amount per guest

The reservation page on apusenipeakparadise.ro — The reservation page — dates, cabin, deposit, confirmation

The rates page, driven by a single global Elementor template — Rates — one global template, used on four pages

The Black Wolf cabin page with its own availability search — A cabin page — Black Wolf, with its own availability search

The photo gallery page on apusenipeakparadise.ro — The gallery — the property, at the size it deserves

The redesigned homepage on a phone — On a phone, where almost all of the traffic actually is

The events landing page on a phone — The events page on a phone

The clips

Some things a photograph cannot sell.

A still frame can show you a hot tub. It cannot show you steam coming off the water at 917 metres, or the swing moving, or the light at seven in the morning. So the site carries six short vertical loops, shot on a phone and cut to a few seconds each — the same six that run on the landing page.

The jacuzzi, under the glass terrace
The Finnish sauna
The wood-fired hot tub
Loungers and the swing seat
The pavilion and the fire pit
The cabin, in the morning

They are free until you want them: every clip is poster-first and preload="none", so scrolling past this section downloads 0 bytes of video. Press one and only that one loads. All six together are 4.1 MB — more than this entire page — which is exactly why they are not loaded for people who never press play.

The build

Run by the people who run the place.

The site isn't a brochure someone else has to maintain. It's built on Elementor Pro — so the team changes a price, swaps a photo or adds a package themselves, in minutes, with no developer on call.

Edit without code

The whole site is visual and drag-and-drop — text, photos and prices change in minutes.

One design system

Colours, fonts and spacing are global; set once, they stay consistent on every page.

Reusable templates

Headers, footers and layouts are built once and reused, so nothing drifts out of style.

Truly responsive

Separate desktop, tablet and phone controls mean it looks right on any screen.

Popups built in

Seasonal offers, newsletter capture and notices without bolting on extra plugins.

Dynamic content

Room data, rates and availability pull in automatically instead of being retyped.

A lean widget library

Sliders, galleries, forms and maps are native — fewer plugins, less to break.

Fonts served locally

The typeface ships from the site's own server, so no third-party request delays the first paint.

Fine layout & motion

Subtle animation and pixel-level control, all without touching code.

Cheap to change

The most-used builder on the web, so tweaks are quick and inexpensive — from us or any developer.

The reservation engine

A booking system, not a booking form.

Behind the calendar sits a full reservation engine — rates, rules, payments and paperwork, automated end to end. Everything a busy host needs, and nothing they have to think about.

Rates & availability

Live availability calendar
Season-based dynamic pricing
Weekday & weekend rate rules
Promotional packages
Discounts & discount coupons

Stay rules

Minimum-stay limits
Mandatory check-in days
Mandatory check-out days
Per-cabin availability control
Blocked & special dates

Payments

Pay by bank transfer
Pay by card online
A 30% deposit or the full amount
Just 1% fee on card payments
Auto-generated reservation code

Automation

Automatic email confirmations
Proforma invoice on transfer
Fiscal invoice on card (SmartBill)
Guest & booking records in one place
Seamless updates, resilient under load

Payments & invoicing

Paid and invoiced, automatically.

The lowest card fee we could source

Just 1% on every online card payment — so more of each booking stays with the host, not the processor.

Invoiced by SmartBill

The booking engine is wired to SmartBill: every paid reservation raises the right document with zero manual work.

Proforma or fiscal — automatically

A bank transfer raises a proforma; a card payment raises a fiscal invoice on the spot. The guest gets it by email; the books stay clean.

A deposit holds the dates

Guests pay 30% to confirm and settle the rest on arrival — the system tracks the balance through to check-in.

Measured on real visitors

Core Web Vitals: passed.

PassedCore Web Vitals assessment · phone

These are not lab numbers. Each one is the 75th percentile of what actual visitors to apusenipeakparadise.ro measured on their own phones over a 28-day window — the same field data Google uses when it ranks the site. We publish the thresholds next to the values so you can see how much room is left, including where there isn't much.

LCP1.7 s

Largest Contentful Paint — when the main image finished loading

Good ≤ 2.5 sPoor > 4.0 s

84% of visits are in the good band.

INP195 ms

Interaction to Next Paint — how fast the page answers a tap

Good ≤ 200 msPoor > 500 ms

Inside the threshold, but only just — this is the one we are still working on.

CLS0.10

Cumulative Layout Shift — how much the page moves under your thumb

Good ≤ 0.10Poor > 0.25

Sitting exactly on the line. Worth watching after every photo change.

FCP1.2 s

First Contentful Paint — when anything appeared at all

Good ≤ 1.8 sPoor > 3.0 s

83% of visits are in the good band.

TTFB0.8 s

Time to First Byte — the server's own response time

Good ≤ 0.8 sPoor > 1.8 s

A shared-host ceiling as much as a code one.

Source: the Chrome UX Report, 28 days to 17 September 2026, phone form factor, 75th percentile. Desktop is not shown because the site does not receive enough desktop traffic for Google to report a figure — which is itself the answer to "which device should we design for". We deliberately do not quote a PageSpeed performance score: it is a lab simulation, and we have watched the same URL score 60 and 96 within an hour. Check it yourself

The outcome

Direct

Bookings taken on-site — no 15–20% platform commission

0 manual

Confirmation, payment and invoice raised automatically

3 pages

Site, ad landing page and events page — one design system

Passed

Core Web Vitals on phone, measured on real visitors

The owners list two cabins, set their seasons and watch the calendar fill — the site takes the booking, the card and the invoice on its own. Every direct reservation is one the platforms don't get to tax, and the whole thing stays theirs to edit.

How we work

Four steps, every time.

Discovery call

Thirty free minutes to understand the business, the market, and where the money actually leaks.

Custom strategy

A plan built around the one metric that matters — not a template, not a channel checklist.

Implementation

Senior hands build it: campaigns, pages, tracking — the whole funnel wired as one system.

Monitor & optimise

We watch the numbers every week and cut what doesn’t pay, so results compound instead of fading.

We had the cabins and the view, but Cittago gave us the perfect digital “reception”. They created a premium, ultra-fast website for us that handles everything on its own: live calendar, automatic invoicing and card payments (only 1% commission instead of 15–20% on platforms). The best part? We edit it ourselves in a few minutes, without depending on anyone. And Paul is simply unreal for this world! The warmth, respect and attention to detail with which he explains absolutely everything make you understand the services offered perfectly. Not to be missed is the availability that Paul shows when you have a question. Honestly, I have rarely dealt with such a professional and dedicated company.

Viorica Pop Google review · Apuseni Peak Paradise

What we wrote back

Thank you so much, Viorica, for these words! We are so happy that the automatic booking and invoicing system makes your daily work easier and that you felt the difference compared to the high commissions of the platforms. That is exactly what we set out to do: a site that you can control yourself, without dependencies. We are glad that you felt the attention to detail and availability put into every stage of the collaboration — it was a pleasure working together and we can't wait to see your cottages grow!

Read it on Google

A fair first step

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