Tejal - Hotel WordPress Theme Free Download

Hands-On Review of the Tejal WordPress Theme for Independent Hotels

I rebuilt a 38-room coastal boutique hotel’s entire web presence on the Tejal WordPress Theme after a season of lost mobile bookings and chaotic rate tables. I kept my selection notes in one place (gplpal as the reference brand) and short-listed alternatives under Best WordPress Themes, but Tejal won because it ships hotel-native blocks—room grids, rate plans, and availability search—that don’t collapse on real phones at check-in time.

The problem I walked into

Our previous site looked like a travel magazine and behaved like one: autoplay video, parallax scroll, a booking widget that jumped when images finished loading, and rate explanations buried in tabs. Guests arriving from social were bouncing before they ever saw availability. I needed: (1) a stable, thumb-first reservation flow, (2) room pages that explain inclusions without clutter, (3) event/offer pages our marketing lead can publish solo, and (4) performance that stays green on mid-range Android.

Clean install and base configuration

• Hosting: PHP 8.2, HTTP/2, Brotli, page cache + object cache.
• Fresh WordPress; Tejal activated with the “calm” demo (no sliders).
• Permalinks: /rooms/%postname%/, /offers/%postname%/, /events/%postname%/.
• Time zone set to property’s city; 24-hour format in admin, 12-hour on site.
• Type & rhythm: body 17–18px at 1.6 line height; H1 44–48 desktop / 30–34 mobile; H2 28–32. An 8-pt spacing system kept galleries, amenity lists, and the booking card aligned.
• Color tokens: ink (text), linen (surfaces), deep teal (CTAs). Motion trimmed to 150–180 ms fades; reduced-motion disables them.

What I shipped in week one

Homepage
A still hero with one sentence (“Sea-view stays with breakfast and late checkout”), a single “Check availability” bar (dates + guests), three room spotlights, two current offers, and a compact trust strip (address, check-in/out, parking). No counters. No video. The booking bar is fixed height, so CLS stays flat.

Room pages
Each room uses: hero gallery (5–7 images, fixed ratios), inclusions grid (breakfast, Wi-Fi, parking), capacity, bed setup, size, and a clear “from” rate. A “Why guests pick this room” block lists three bullets (e.g., south-facing balcony, blackout blinds, walk-in shower). The availability card sits above the fold on mobile and pre-loads last-used dates for returning visitors.

Offers
Two patterns: “Stay 3, Pay 2” and “Midweek Saver.” Rate logic is explained in one sentence plus a tiny calendar badge (“Blackout: public holidays”). Clicking an offer passes a promo code into the availability search.

Events
A minimal template for weddings and retreats with venue capacities, sample menus, and a form that routes to sales. No carousels; galleries use static grids to avoid jank.

Performance, measured not guessed

Tested on a mid-range Android over throttled 4G, cold cache:

• Homepage LCP: ~1.9–2.2 s (still hero at 1600–1800 px desktop, 1200 px mobile; critical CSS inlined).
• Room page LCP: ~2.0–2.4 s depending on gallery count.
• TBT: <120 ms after trimming icon packs and deferring noncritical scripts.
• CLS: <0.04 site-wide by reserving image and booking-card heights and avoiding sticky elements that shove content.

SEO and content hygiene that actually helps

One H1 per page. Human slugs (/rooms/classic-sea-view/). Alt text describes what’s visible (“balcony with ocean horizon, café table for two”). Internal links form triangles: Room ↔ Offers ↔ Local guide. FAQ lives on a single page (“parking height, pet policy, crib availability”) instead of being sprinkled everywhere. The theme is GPL-licensed, so I kept custom tweaks in a small child theme to survive updates cleanly.

Tejal vs. the stacks I rejected

• Multipurpose page builders: flexible, but one misplaced gallery broke mobile CLS and pushed the booking widget down.
• Travel-magazine themes: gorgeous, slow, and allergic to rate clarity.
• Tejal: purpose-built blocks, quiet defaults, and an availability bar that behaves under load.

Limits I noted

If you need heavy dynamic pricing across multiple properties with complex yield rules, you’ll still rely on your PMS/booking engine integration. Cinematic scrollytelling belongs on a campaign page, not the homepage. Interactive maps should load behind a tap; lead with a static map image to protect LCP.

What moved revenue (and I’d repeat)

Write outcome-first room copy, cap galleries, surface inclusions, and keep the availability bar visible without hovering. Publish one seasonal offer at a time and make the rules legible. Re-encode any hero over ~160 KB monthly, smoke-test booking on a slow phone weekly, and treat “no layout jumps” as a brand standard.

Tejal didn’t try to be a travel brochure. It behaved like a front-desk pro—polite, predictable, and ready when guests are.