Prodigy Holidays
Holiday apartments for rent in Armação de Pêra on the Algarve coast. In early 2026 we replaced a dated, text-only site with a bilingual Portuguese and English site with online reservations, SEO built in from the first page and proper security. Bookings went up 68%.
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The previous site, captured by the Wayback Machine in December 2025, before the early-2026 rebuild.
The challenge
Holiday rentals compete with Airbnb and Booking.com on their own turf. A direct-booking site has to look as trustworthy as the big platforms, load fast for tourists on hotel Wi-Fi, and take a reservation without a phone call. The old Prodigy Holidays site did none of that. It had one banner photo of a sunset, a wall of text, a language switcher made of broken flag icons, no SEO of any kind and no way to book. Guests found the apartments on the big platforms, paid the commission, and the owners' own website sat there doing nothing.
What we did
We rebuilt the site on WordPress in early 2026: photo-first design, an online reservation system, Portuguese and English versions that Google understands as one site, SEO from scratch and hardened security.
Photos first, because that is what sells a beach apartment
The home page opens on the beach at Armação de Pêra, full width, with the headline and a "Check availability" button over it. Each apartment has its own page with a gallery, the amenities list, distance to the beach and water parks, and the booking widget. The text got shorter and more useful: what is included, how far things are, what the area is like in July versus October.
Online reservations instead of a contact form
The single biggest change. Guests pick dates, see availability and price, and reserve on the spot. The owners get the booking in their calendar and the guest gets a confirmation, without anyone answering an email at midnight. Bookings went up 68% after the reservation system went live, and every one of them is commission-free.
Two languages, one site
Portuguese and English versions of every page, linked with hreflang so Google shows the right one to a family in Lisbon and to a couple in Manchester. One site to maintain, not two. The broken flag icons are gone; the switcher is a plain EN / PT toggle that works.
SEO from zero
The old site had no titles, no descriptions and no structure. The new one targets "holiday apartments Armação de Pêra" and "apartamentos para alugar em Armação de Pêra" on the home page, with apartment pages, an amenities page and a services page each covering one search. LodgingBusiness and Accommodation structured data describe the apartments to Google, and the page speed work (5 MB of images became a few hundred kilobytes each) gets Lighthouse to 100 for SEO, 100 for best practices and 95 for accessibility.
Security and maintenance
Updates, firewall, backups and SSL, set up once and monitored. A holiday rental site that goes down in August loses a season's bookings; this one has not.
AEO and GEO
Every apartment page states plainly where it is, how many it sleeps, what it costs in high and low season and how to book, in both languages. That is the text an AI assistant quotes when someone asks for a family apartment near the beach in Armação de Pêra. An FAQ covers check-in, parking, distances and the water parks, with FAQPage structured data behind it.
"The old site had a sunset photo and a wall of text. Guests booked on Booking.com and the owners paid the commission. Now they book on the owners' own site, and there are 68% more of them."
- A holiday rental website without online booking is a brochure that sends guests to Booking.com. Adding reservations raised bookings 68%.
- Bilingual done properly means hreflang and one site, not two copies that drift apart.
- SEO from zero is faster than fixing bad SEO. There was nothing to undo.
- Photos sell beach apartments. The text only has to answer the questions.
Questions about this project
Why build a direct-booking site when the apartments are already on Airbnb and Booking.com?
Because every booking through the owners' own site is commission-free and the guest relationship belongs to them. The platforms still bring guests; the website converts the ones who search for the apartments by name or by location.
How does the bilingual site work?
Every page exists in Portuguese and English, linked with hreflang tags so Google serves the right language to each searcher. A visible EN / PT toggle lets guests switch at any time.
What changed after the rebuild?
Bookings went up 68% once the online reservation system went live. Lighthouse scores the site 100 for SEO and best practices and 95 for accessibility on mobile.
How much does a bilingual holiday rental website cost?
A site like this, with apartment pages, online reservations and two languages, is our Growth package from $5,490 CAD plus the bilingual add-on. We work in English, Spanish and Portuguese-language projects with a translator.
Do you work with clients in Portugal from Canada?
Yes. Prodigy Holidays is in the Algarve. We handle the project over video and email; the time difference between Calgary and Portugal is seven hours, which works well for morning calls on their side.