Travel Time is a WordPress theme built by cmsmasters for businesses and publishers in the tourism sector. It ships with dedicated content types for tours and staff profiles, two bundled slider plugins, a custom admin panel and more than ninety shortcodes, so a travel agency, hotel, resort or travel blog can assemble a complete site without buying additional layout tools. It is aimed at site owners who want niche-specific structure out of the box rather than a generic multipurpose theme they would have to reshape themselves.
The theme sits in the retail category on ThemeForest at $59, has sold 920 copies and was last updated in September 2025. That combination of a modest but real sales history and a recent update matters when judging whether a theme is still being maintained.
What Travel Time Actually Gives a Travel Website
The most consequential feature is the pair of custom post types. Tours and Profiles are content structures the theme registers itself, which means a tour operator can create a tour as its own object with its own fields, then list, filter and display those tours through theme templates rather than building each one as a standard blog post. Profiles work the same way for guides, agents or team members. For a business that sells or promotes trips, this is the difference between a site that looks like a travel site and one that merely has travel photographs on it.
Two slider plugins are included: Layer Slider and Revolution Slider. Both are commercial products that would otherwise carry separate licence costs, and both are well known for layered animation and responsive behaviour. A hotel can use one for a hero banner on the homepage and reserve the other for a gallery or promotion block. The vendor notes that images shown in the demo are not part of the download, so buyers need their own photography.
The shortcode library runs past ninety items. In practice these are the building blocks for pages: buttons, columns, pricing tables, testimonial blocks and similar elements that can be dropped into the page editor and configured. Combined with a custom admin panel that extends the standard WordPress settings screens, the theme gives a fairly deep set of controls over colours, backgrounds and menu styling without touching code. Unlimited menu colour options and per-page background settings fall into the same category of convenience.
Under the hood, the theme outputs HTML5 and CSS3, is responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile widths, and is retina ready, meaning graphics are served at sufficient density for high-resolution screens. The vendor also includes a large set of custom widgets, with specific options for social feeds such as Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, plus hundreds of Google Fonts for typography.
Who Should Use Travel Time Retail, and Who Should Not
The clearest fit is a small or mid-sized tour operator, travel agency or excursion business that needs a brochure-style site with a structured tour catalogue. The Tours post type does most of the heavy lifting here, and the shortcodes make it realistic for a single person to build out landing pages for individual packages.
Hotels, guesthouses and resorts are the second natural audience. Room and facility pages can be built with the same layout tools, and the slider plugins handle the visual presentation that hospitality sites depend on. Independent travel bloggers and travel publications are a third fit, though they benefit less from the Tours structure and more from the typography, widget and layout options.
It is the wrong choice for a site that needs real booking and inventory management. The theme is a presentation layer, not a reservation system, and nothing in the vendor’s description indicates built-in availability calendars, payment processing or channel management. A business that needs to take live bookings should expect to add a dedicated booking plugin, and should verify compatibility before buying. The same caution applies to anyone who wants a lightweight, hand-coded site: the shortcode-driven approach produces heavier markup than a bespoke build.
Setting Up Travel Time in Practice
Installation follows the standard WordPress route: upload the theme package, activate it, then install the bundled plugins. Both slider plugins are typically prompted by the theme after activation, and the vendor documents this in the knowledgebase. Because two slider plugins are included, it is worth deciding early which one the site will standardise on, since running both across a large site adds unnecessary weight.
After activation, the work is configuration rather than development. The custom admin panel holds the theme’s global settings, and this is where colours, fonts, backgrounds and menu styling get set. Populating tours and profiles comes next, and this is the step that takes the longest, because each tour needs its own content, images and fields. Page building with shortcodes is comparatively quick once the pattern is established.
Prerequisites are modest: a working WordPress installation, a hosting environment that meets current WordPress requirements, and a source of original imagery. The vendor does not state a minimum PHP or WordPress version in the listing, so that should be confirmed before purchase. A realistic timeline for a competent WordPress user is a weekend for a basic site and one to two weeks for a full tour catalogue with polished inner pages. The included knowledgebase is written with screenshots from both the admin and the front end, which shortens the learning curve for anyone new to the theme.
Strengths and Limitations
Strengths
- Purpose-built Tours and Profiles post types give travel content a real structure rather than forcing it into blog posts.
- Layer Slider and Revolution Slider are bundled, removing two separate licence purchases.
- More than ninety shortcodes make page assembly fast for non-developers.
- Responsive, retina-ready output with HTML5 and CSS3 markup.
- Deep styling controls through the custom admin panel, including unlimited menu colours and per-page backgrounds.
- Recently updated and backed by a documented knowledgebase and an author with a track record on ThemeForest.
Limitations
- No booking, availability or payment functionality is described. Any transactional requirement needs a third-party plugin.
- The Events Calendar PRO addon is explicitly not included and must be bought separately, which is an extra cost if event listings are part of the plan.
- Demo images are excluded from the download, so the visual quality of the finished site depends entirely on the buyer’s own photography.
- Shortcode-heavy page building can make content harder to migrate later, since the layout is tied to the theme’s own elements.
- Two slider plugins in one package is more than most sites need and can bloat page weight if both are used.
- The listing does not state minimum WordPress or PHP versions, which leaves a compatibility check to the buyer.
How Travel Time Compares With Other Travel Themes
The travel theme category splits roughly in two. On one side are multipurpose themes that can be styled to look like a travel site; on the other are niche themes like this one that ship with travel-specific content types. Travel Time retail belongs firmly to the second group, and that is its main advantage: the Tours and Profiles structures are already built, so the buyer starts from a working travel site rather than a blank canvas.
Against multipurpose themes, the trade-off is flexibility elsewhere. A general-purpose theme will usually support more varied page types and a wider plugin ecosystem out of the box. Against dedicated booking platforms, the trade-off runs the other way: those systems handle reservations but often constrain design. Travel Time occupies the middle ground, strong on presentation and content structure, dependent on add-ons for anything transactional.
Within its own niche, the deciding factors are usually the bundled sliders, the depth of the shortcode library and whether the theme is still maintained. On the first two the package is competitive; on the third, the September 2025 update is a positive signal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Travel Time include a booking system for hotels and tours?
No. The theme provides the content structure and design for tours and hotel pages, but it does not include reservation, availability or payment functionality. Sites that need to take bookings will require a separate booking plugin, and compatibility with the theme’s templates should be checked before purchase.
Are the slider plugins really included for free?
Yes. Layer Slider and Revolution Slider are both bundled with the theme, so no separate licence is needed for either. The vendor does note that the Events Calendar PRO addon is not included and must be purchased separately, since third-party distribution of that plugin is not permitted.
Can Travel Time be used for a travel blog rather than a business site?
Yes. The theme supports standard blog layouts alongside its tour and profile content types, and the typography, widget and background options work for editorial sites. Bloggers will get less value from the Tours structure, but the layout and styling tools remain fully usable for article-driven publishing.
Do the demo images come with the theme?
No. The vendor states clearly that content images shown in the demo are not part of the download. Buyers need to supply their own photography or licence stock images separately, which is a real cost to factor in for hotels and tour operators who want a polished visual result.
Verdict
Travel Time retail is a sound purchase for tour operators, travel agencies, hotels and resorts that need a structured, well-styled website without commissioning custom development. The Tours and Profiles post types, the two bundled sliders and the large shortcode library give it a genuine head start over generic themes, and the recent update plus a documented knowledgebase suggest it is actively maintained. It is not the right buy for anyone who needs live booking and payment handling built in, nor for developers who prefer clean, hand-built markup over shortcode-driven pages. At $59 with 920 sales behind it, the value case is reasonable for a presentation-focused travel site, provided the buyer budgets for imagery and any booking plugin the project requires.
