Can you change the font of the Smoobu booking engine?

Not in the standard widget — it uses its own typeface rather than your website's font. Only a base colour, your logo, languages and currency can be configured. If the booking flow needs to match your fonts and shapes, you need either a custom development on the Smoobu API or a ready-made customisable booking engine such as BineBoost.

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

No. The booking engine runs in an iframe on a different domain. For security reasons (the browser's same-origin policy) your website cannot restyle its contents with CSS or JavaScript. Guides that promise this do not work, or break with the next update.

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

Realistically several weeks of development time for calendar, pricing logic, forms, emails and error handling, ongoing maintenance when the API changes, and costs from several thousand euros upwards depending on requirements. For individual hosts that rarely pays off; a ready-made customisable booking engine is usually the better middle ground.

Guide · Design

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

Updated 22 July 2026 · Approx. 5 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. This is exactly where guests drop out, 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 as an iframe or link. A few things can be configured there:

A base colour for buttons and accents
Your logo and photos of the properties
The languages shown and the currency
Basic details such as minimum stay or rates (from your Smoobu settings)

For many hosts that is enough to get started — and it is set up in minutes. 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 difficult. These points cannot (or can barely) be influenced in the standard widget:

Fonts: the booking flow uses its own typeface — not your website's.
Shapes & layout: corner radii, buttons, spacing and the structure of the pages are fixed.
Price presentation: extra costs such as tourist tax, tiered surcharges from a certain number of guests, or a deposit following your own rules can only be represented to a limited extent.
Fine-tuning: custom texts per property, the order of content, hiding individual elements.

Why CSS tricks do not work: the booking engine runs in an iframe on a different domain. For security reasons (the same-origin policy) your website fundamentally cannot restyle its contents with CSS or JavaScript. Guides that promise otherwise do not work, or break with the next update.

Route 1: live with the standard options

If your website is fairly plain anyway and the base colour fits, that is perfectly legitimate. Pick the widget colour to match your branding 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 offers an open interface (API) that handles availability, rates and bookings. With it a developer can build a completely bespoke booking flow that looks 100 % like your website. Realistically you should budget for:

Several weeks of development time (calendar, pricing logic, forms, emails, error cases)
Ongoing maintenance when the API changes
Costs from several thousand euros upwards, depending on requirements

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 Google fonts
Button shapes, corner radii and shadows — with a live preview and ready-made design templates
Real pricing rules: tourist tax per person/night, VAT per line item, guest tiers by season, pet fees, deposits following your rules
Your own photos and texts per property, bilingual (German/English)

The bookings still land in your Smoobu calendar as usual and sync to Booking.com, Airbnb and others — Smoobu remains your leading system.

Checklist: what to look for in any solution

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

A booking flow in your own design — in minutes, not weeks

BineBoost connects to your Smoobu account and delivers a booking engine that looks like your website. First property €9 per month, no commission.

Try it free for 7 days See the live demo

No credit card required — the trial ends automatically.