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.
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 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.
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.
The whole thing runs on Elementor Pro, so the owners change a price, block a weekend or add an offer themselves — no ticket, no wait. Every direct booking is one the platforms don't get to tax, and every payment raises its own invoice automatically. We handled design, build, the booking setup, local SEO and hosting end to end.
Two cabins, a jacuzzi and a sauna — the stay, in three frames
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.
Fast by design
Clean output and performance controls keep load times low — better SEO, more bookings.
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
- Full payment or a deposit
- 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.
1%
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.
Full or partial payment
Guests pay in full or leave a deposit to hold the dates — the system tracks the balance through to arrival.
The outcome
Direct
Bookings taken on-site — no 15–20% platform commission
0 manual
Confirmation, payment and invoice raised automatically
2 cabins
Black Wolf & Savage Samurai, run from one calendar
1% card fee
The lowest online-card cost, kept off guest and host
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.
A fair first step
Want a site that takes its own bookings?
Thirty minutes with a senior strategist, no script and no pitch. We'll look at how you take reservations today and sketch what a direct, commission-free booking engine would change — yours to keep, whoever builds it.
15 years · 5.0 on Google · 56 brands · 11.4× average return on ads · 6 countries
