Guide · Design

Customise the Smoobu booking engine to match your website design: options & limits

Updated 9 September 2026 · Approx. 8 min read

You have invested time and money in a beautiful website for your holiday rental, and then comes the most important moment, the booking, and suddenly everything looks different: a different font, different colours, an unfamiliar layout. That is the moment where guests hesitate, because a visible system break costs trust. In this article we take an honest look at what can be customised in the Smoobu booking engine, where the limits are, and which routes lead to a booking flow that really matches your website.

What you can customise in the standard Smoobu widget

Smoobu comes with its own booking engine that you embed in your website with a code snippet. What can be set on it is described by Smoobu itself as follows (as of September 2026):

• A CSS field in the settings of the booking engine (in Smoobu's German interface: Kernfunktionen > Buchungssystem > Einstellungen Buchungssystem). It comes pre-filled with a list of colour values: text colour, button and brand colours and more. Smoobu's own advice on it: replace the colour values with your brand colours and leave the rest of the structure as it is.
• Per property one photo (square works best, 500 kB at most) and a marketing title per language.
• Two settings on the embed: the opacity of the background in per cent, and whether the search results open in a new browser tab.
• In the booking form, for each guest field, whether it is optional, required or hidden, and whether guests give a total number of guests or adults and children separately. That is a guest count, not a pricing rule.

You can read all of that in Smoobu's help articles on the design of the booking engine, on setting the booking engine up and on embedding it in your website, all written in German. For many hosts that is enough to get started. That is the strength of the standard solution.

Where the limits are

As soon as your website has a character of its own, things get tighter. Smoobu draws the following lines itself, or we measured them on the interface, or a host wrote them under Smoobu's own help article:

• Everything beyond the colour list: the pre-filled CSS field is a list of colour values. Smoobu writes itself that anything beyond that is a job for a web developer, and that Smoobu support does not write custom CSS for you (as of September 2026).
• Two pages keep Smoobu's colour: according to Smoobu's help, the buttons on the property details page and on the Book Now page do not follow the theme of the website builder (as of September 2026). In the editor that cannot be changed, support adjusts it on request.
• Texts per property: next to the amenity icons there is exactly one place for those according to Smoobu's help, the marketing title per language (as of September 2026).
• Down payment: if a connected booking flow passes a down payment amount to Smoobu, Smoobu replaces it with its own rule. A security deposit amount that is passed along stays as it is. Measured on 12 August 2026: €4.56 sent, €86.00 in the calendar afterwards.
• Prices by age: under Smoobu's own help article on the booking engine, a host wrote in August 2026 that price groups for different age bands cannot be set. That is one user's view, not product documentation. Anyone who wants age-dependent prices or a tourist tax by age needs a layer in front of Smoobu for it.

Route 1: live with the standard options

If your website is fairly plain anyway, that is a perfectly sound choice. Put your brand colours into the CSS field, the way Smoobu suggests itself, and make sure the transition (heading, surrounding text) visually softens the change of style.

Route 2: build your own booking flow on the Smoobu API

Smoobu has an interface (API). Availability, rates and the creation of bookings run over it in our own operation, as of September 2026. With it a developer can build a booking flow that follows your design all the way. Realistically you should budget for:

• Several weeks of development time (calendar, pricing logic, forms, emails, error cases)
• Ongoing maintenance when the API changes
• Costs that cannot be quoted as a flat figure: they depend on the developer's hourly rate and on the scope

For individual hosts this rarely pays off. For agencies with several clients it can be interesting.

Route 3: a ready-made, customisable booking engine for Smoobu

The middle ground: a ready-made booking flow that builds on the Smoobu interface while you control its design. That is exactly why we built BineBoost. You connect your Smoobu account, and in the dashboard you set:

• Colours (four base colours from which all shades are derived) and 21 fonts: twelve to choose from for headings, twelve for body text, three of them in both lists
• Button shapes, corner radii and shadows, with a live preview and ready-made design templates
• Real pricing rules: child rates per age band, tourist tax with its own tax rate and age tiers, down payment and cancellation terms following your rules, a refundable security deposit
• Your own photos and texts per property, in five languages (German, English, Dutch, Italian, French)

The bookings still land in your Smoobu calendar as usual, and the portal sync carries on unchanged. Smoobu remains your leading system.

A tool only shows what you give it. Whether your rules for down payment, cancellation and security deposit hold up, and how you show tourist tax, visitor's tax and VAT, belongs in front of a lawyer and a tax adviser before it goes into the booking flow.

Checklist: what to look for in any solution

1. Design control: can you really adjust colours, fonts and shapes, or does the customisation end at a list of colour values?
2. Pricing rules: can tourist tax, tiers and deposits be represented exactly as you need them?
3. Calendar sync: do bookings land in Smoobu immediately and block the portals?
4. Cost: a fixed monthly price or a commission per booking? Commissions add up fast.
5. Data protection: is guest data processed in line with the GDPR (data processing agreement)?

Points two and five are not decided by the software in the end. What you may agree on for down payment, cancellation and security deposit, and how tourist tax, visitor's tax and VAT have to be shown, is worth checking with a lawyer and a tax adviser. The booking flow only carries out what you have laid down.

Frequently asked questions

What can you actually change in the standard Smoobu widget?

According to Smoobu's own help article a CSS field that comes pre-filled with a list of colour values: text colour, button and brand colours and more. On top of that, one photo and one marketing title per language for each property, and on the embed the opacity of the background plus a switch for a new browser tab (as of September 2026). For everything beyond that Smoobu points you to a web developer.

Can I restyle the Smoobu booking widget with my own CSS?

In the settings of the booking engine yes: there is a CSS field that Smoobu explicitly offers for it and pre-fills with a colour list (as of September 2026). From your own website no: the booking flow runs in an iframe on a different domain, and the browser's same-origin policy forbids your page from reaching in there. Guides that promise you CSS or JavaScript tricks from the outside do not work, or they break with the next update.

Can you change the font of the Smoobu booking engine?

Smoobu's help describes the CSS field as a list of colour values and refers you to a web developer for anything beyond it (as of September 2026). Under that help article a host asked back in August 2020 for a little more choice of typeface and design. With BineBoost the fonts are part of the settings: you pick from 21 of them for headings and body text, along with colours and corner radii.

Can I embed just the booking calendar instead of the whole flow?

Smoobu itself has the calendar iFrame for that, but it only shows the occupancy: guests cannot pick days in it, cannot see prices and cannot book. That is how Smoobu's help describes it (as of September 2026). Anyone who wants a calendar that can be booked from needs an add-on. BineBoost has two building blocks for that: every property gets its own page with a calendar and a booking box, and for your homepage there is a compact search widget. You get both as a code snippet that you paste into an HTML field on your website, in WordPress for example.

Does this also work on a website from the Smoobu website builder?

Yes. The website builder takes your own HTML code, so your booking engine can sit there. We walked that route ourselves and wrote it down step by step. One point is easily missed: according to Smoobu's help the builder creates a website in which Smoobu's own booking engine is already embedded (as of September 2026). On the page where your flow is going to sit, the existing one has to go first, otherwise the guest has two of them in front of them. The whole route is shown in the guide for the Smoobu website.

What does a custom booking flow on the Smoobu API cost?

There is no list price for a bespoke development on the Smoobu API: it depends on the developer's hourly rate, on the scope and on the ongoing maintenance. What can be calculated is a ready-made solution: BineBoost costs €9.00 per month for the first property and €5.25 for each additional one, 10 per cent cheaper when paid annually, plus VAT in each case. There is no commission per booking and no setup fee, and you can try it for 7 days without a credit card.

Does a booking engine of my own replace my Smoobu account?

No. BineBoost sits on an existing account through the official Smoobu API, and Smoobu remains your channel manager and PMS. Every booking is created in the Smoobu calendar, and the portal sync carries on unchanged. Without an active Smoobu account the add-on does not work at all.