A direct-booking website for a boutique hotel group

The client runs several independent hotels, each with its own character. Over the years every property had built its own website, its own look and its own booking engine, and most reservations came through booking platforms that kept a share of every stay.

The owners asked us for a single brand and a single website that guests would prefer to the platforms.

Booking platforms outspend any hotel on advertising and rank first for most searches.

The existing sites were slow, looked different from one another and gave guests no reason to book direct. The high season was five months away.

Goals

• Bring the hotels together under one recognisable brand.
• Increase the share of bookings made directly on the website.
• Launch before the high season, without losing existing search traffic.

We started with the brand, then designed the website around the booking journey and built it to load fast on a phone. Each part of the work is described below.

• Brand identity

  Positioning, a naming system and a visual identity for the group, with room for each hotel to keep its own character.

• UX/UI design

  A booking journey reduced to three steps, tested with guests before development began.

• Website development

  One site for all hotels, with the booking engine integrated on every page and content the team can edit.

• Performance and search

  Fast pages, every old address redirected, and campaigns on each hotel’s own name to win searches back from the platforms.

The new site launched before the season. Direct bookings rose month after month, reliance on the platforms fell, and the hotels now present themselves as one brand. We continue to manage search and advertising for the group.

• +00%

  direct bookings in six months

• -00%

  commission paid to booking platforms

• 0.0s

  average page load on mobile