The booking system is the theme, not a plugin bolted on
Plenty of hotel themes stop at a rooms post type and leave reservations to a third-party plugin. Nation Hotel's vendor description puts the opposite arrangement at the centre: a built-in booking system where you manage booking requests from the WordPress dashboard, set up booking calendars, and create checkout forms.
That single sentence describes a workflow rather than a feature bullet. Availability lives in a calendar you configure, requests arrive in the admin rather than in an inbox, and the checkout form is something you compose. If your front desk currently handles enquiries over email and a spreadsheet, the appeal here is consolidating those steps inside the site you already log into. If you already run a dedicated property management system, note that the vendor does not describe an integration with one.
Everything below should be read as the vendor's description of the theme, not as results from testing it on a live install.
PayPal charge after reservation, and coupons from version 1.2
The payment side is specific. The vendor states the booking system includes a PayPal payment gateway, so a guest can pay from a PayPal balance or directly by credit card once they finish the reservation form. That is automatic charging at the point of booking, not an invoice you raise afterwards.
The changelog adds the pricing layer that sits on top. Version 1.2, released 25 August 2014, introduced the ability to create discount coupons on the reservation form, and also made reservation details editable from the backend. Together those two entries describe a booking flow where a discounted stay can be requested online and then corrected by staff if a guest telephones with a change.
What the supplied material does not describe is any second gateway, deposit versus full-payment handling, or tax and fee logic. If your property needs Stripe, a payment on arrival, or per-night rate rules, treat those as open questions to settle with the vendor's own documentation rather than assumed capabilities.
Rooms, forms and the reservation widget
The feature list frames bookings with a few supporting pieces. The theme lists a Multiple Posts Format entry naming Gallery, Testimonials and Rooms, so room content is a distinct format rather than a generic page, and it pairs that with a single-room page whose description-and-features tabs were patched in version 1.2 so they behave when a page title is hidden.
The vendor also claims an online reservation widget for the main page, which first appeared in version 1.1 alongside a speed improvement to the Ajax availability calendar. A visitor arriving on the homepage can therefore check dates without navigating to a booking page first. The same release fixed a bug where the calendar stopped responding after a date was clicked and the month changed, so the calendar interaction is something the vendor has already had to repair once.
Unlimited contact and booking forms are listed as well, which matters if you want an enquiry form for weddings or group stays separate from the reservation flow. Form field validation was added to the single-room form in 1.2.
46 theme options and 14 widgets do the configuring
The customisation layer is counted rather than named: 46 theme options, 14 built-in widgets, and 14 built-in page templates, with wide and boxed layouts plus unlimited colour options. Rather than a builder canvas, you are working through a settings panel and a widget set, which is typical of the theme's generation and worth weighing if you expect to compose pages block by block.
The marketplace marks Gutenberg Optimized as No. That is a statement about the vendor's block-editor work, not proof the editor is unusable, but it does tell you the theme was designed around its own options and templates rather than around block patterns. The vendor separately claims Revolution Slider as a bundled premium item and lists Font Awesome icons, Google Fonts and Google Maps among the presentation features, with Twitter and Flickr feeds on the sidebar side.
WPML, translation files and a child theme
For a property with guests in more than one language, the vendor claims official WPML compatibility and lists a translation-ready .mo/.po template. The 1.2 changelog gives that claim some substance: it added a wpml-config.xml file to the theme root and rebuilt the language menu using the WPML API, which is the kind of plumbing a theme needs before translated menus behave properly. WPML support and WPML itself are separate purchases, and the supplied material does not describe how booking fields or room content translate.
Child themes are listed as supported, and 1.2 shipped a Nation child theme template. That is the safer route for customising templates than editing the parent files, particularly on a theme whose last recorded marketplace release predates most current plugin versions.
Version currency: what a 2021 update date means for your build
This is where the decision gets practical. The vendor's update on the marketplace is dated 15 June 2021, the marketplace's latest version is 1.2, and the declared WordPress compatibility range runs from 3.6 up to 5.6.x. Browsers listed include IE8 through IE11 alongside Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome and Edge, which places the theme's browser testing firmly in its own era.
Those are declarations made at the time of the item update, not results on your server. A theme that has not been updated since 2021 on a site running a current WordPress release is a real question for a project opening now, and the honest answer is that the listing does not answer it. The changelog shows the vendor has previously reacted to WordPress changes, including a WordPress 3.9 fix and a plugin update resolving a documented add_query_arg vulnerability in 2015, but nothing in the supplied material shows recent maintenance.
The included files are listed as PHP, CSS and JS. The vendor notes that the demo images are not distributed with the theme and can be bought separately on Photo Dune, with links in the documentation, so budget for photography rather than assuming the demo's room shots arrive with the files.
Questions & answers
Does the booking system need WooCommerce to take payments?
Nothing in the supplied description ties it to WooCommerce. The vendor describes the booking system as built into the theme, with PayPal charging handled inside it and checkout forms created from the theme's own settings. PayPal is named as the gateway; no other payment method is described.
Can one reservation form apply a discount?
Yes, according to the changelog. Version 1.2 added discount coupon creation on the reservation form, so a reduced rate can be offered at the point a guest books rather than adjusted afterwards by staff.
Is the theme suitable for translating room descriptions into several languages?
The vendor claims official WPML compatibility, provides a .mo/.po translation template, and added a wpml-config.xml file in version 1.2. That covers the theme's own strings and menus. How custom room content and booking fields translate is not described, so confirm it in the documentation before committing to a multilingual launch.
