Hoteller 6.9 – Booking WordPress Theme

I use Hoteller for hotel, resort, villa, and apartment sites where the booking flow is part of the theme stack, not something I bolt on later. It fits projects that need room types, availability, seasonal pricing, gallery-heavy pages, and a front-end that looks hospitality-specific without building the whole thing from scratch.

I don’t treat it like a “universal” theme. It works best when the site structure matches what the theme expects: accommodation post types, booking forms, predefined room templates, and the bundled page builder flow. If the project is really a custom booking app with unusual inventory logic, I usually outgrow it fast because the business rules start living outside the theme.

What I actually end up editing

Hoteller stores most visual settings in the WordPress admin through the Customizer and the theme options panel from ThemeGoods. Page layouts are typically built with the bundled builder stack, while global items like logo, colors, typography, header behavior, and some booking presentation settings are driven by saved options in the database, not hardcoded PHP constants.

The part that matters in real work: content is editable from WordPress screens, but structural output still comes from the parent theme’s PHP templates. If I need to change markup for room archive cards, booking form placement, header logic, or single accommodation layout at the template level, I do it in a child theme, not in the parent. Otherwise the next theme update wipes it.

On installs I’ve worked on, the theme’s CSS/JS is loaded globally enough that optimization plugins can break booking UI if they delay or combine the wrong files. The usual failure is not “the theme is broken”; it’s that a performance plugin delays theme scripts or jQuery-dependent booking scripts, so datepickers, guest selectors, sticky headers, or gallery/lightbox actions stop responding. When that happens, I check DevTools → Console first for jQuery is not defined or $ is not a function, then Network for blocked or delayed theme JS/CSS files. If optimization is enabled, the fastest fix is:

• exclude jquery, jquery-core, jquery-migrate from delay/defer
• exclude the theme’s main JS bundle and booking-related scripts from minify/combine if the booking form stops reacting

If WooCommerce is used alongside Hoteller for extra purchases or deposits, I also check whether cart/variation scripts are being delayed. A broken add-to-cart state is often fixed by excluding:

• wc-add-to-cart
• wc-add-to-cart-variation
• js-cookie
• jquery-blockui

Where it breaks in production

Booking form looks fine but date selection / availability checks don’t work

I’ve seen this after aggressive caching or JS optimization. The HTML renders, but the calendar or availability request never initializes because the script order changes or inline dependencies fire too early.

Fast fix:

1. In your cache/performance plugin, turn off Delay JavaScript just for the booking pages first.
2. If that restores the form, re-enable optimization and exclude the theme JS handles plus jquery-core.

In DevTools, I look for:

• Console errors around jQuery or undefined booking objects
• Network requests failing for theme JS files or AJAX endpoints
• Cached HTML serving the wrong state to all visitors

Pricing/availability feels inconsistent after edits

This is often a cache issue, not a pricing engine bug. Hotels change rates, minimum stay, or room availability, but full-page caching keeps serving old markup or stale AJAX responses.

Fast fix:

• Exclude booking/search/result pages from page cache in LiteSpeed Cache / WP Rocket / similar.
• Purge object cache if the host uses Redis/Memcached and rates still don’t refresh after page cache is cleared.

If the theme uses AJAX search/availability endpoints, stale cache at the server/CDN layer can make “available” rooms appear unavailable or vice versa. I check Network to see whether search requests are returning cached responses or the wrong query parameters.

Demo import works halfway, then homepage/layout is off

That usually comes from missing required plugins, import timeout, or media import failing. The theme options may import, but menus, widgets, homepage assignment, and images remain incomplete.

Fast fix:

1. Install every required/recommended plugin from the theme notice before importing.
2. Re-run import on a clean install if possible, then manually set Settings → Reading homepage/posts page and reassign menus in Appearance → Menus.

License, activation, updates

Hoteller generally runs without a purchase code after installation, so the theme itself can load and be used. What you typically lose without activation/valid license support is:

• one-click dashboard updates
• official support
• access to vendor-managed demo/import services or bundled premium plugin update flow, if tied to license validation

Manual updates are straightforward: upload the new theme ZIP via Appearance → Themes or replace the parent theme over FTP/SFTP. The risk is simple: any edits made directly in the parent theme are overwritten. I fix that by putting PHP template changes, custom CSS, and hooks in a child theme from day one.

Bundled plugins are the other gotcha. A theme update does not always mean bundled premium plugins are updated automatically unless the vendor’s updater/license flow is active. If a page builder or booking-related bundled plugin is outdated, I update that separately from the package the theme author provides.

Installation and activation

Download Medilazar archive with the latest update and install it over the existing version. If there is no previous version installed, the theme can be installed using the standard method. You can find detailed instructions on how to update a theme or plugin on this page.

Practical FAQ (things devs actually ask)