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Brief
Maybourne Hotel Group owns three legendary 5 star hotels in London: Claridge's, The Connaught and The Berkeley.
In late 2007, Maybourne selected travel and luxury specialists, Nucleus, to define a new digital strategy for Maybourne Hotel Group and re-design hotel websites for each of its landmark properties. Included in Nucleus' remit was to advise on a new technical platform and CMS system, upgraded booking engine based on Pegasus Ultra Direct and hosting infrastructure.
The roll-out would start with the launch of a new website for The Connaught, following its painstaking £80m restoration, followed by The Berkeley in Knightsbridge and then Claridge's in Mayfair, which launched in November 2008.
Strategy/Execution
Nucleus' first challenge was to identify a suitable technical architecture to provide a content managed platform to enable easy content updates and ensure future scalability. Nucleus specified an architecture based on Ektron 400 CMS, a reliable and cost-effective .Net solution.
Following extensive analysis and discussions, the overall content architecture for each hotel was then defined, validated and signed-off prior to the look-and-feel being designed, with the aim of creating a distinctive brand experience for each property, underpinned by consistent navigation.
The website designs bring out the individual characters of each legendary hotel. The Berkeley website oozes contemporary chic, in The Times' words "Where the world's beautiful people seem just that little bit more beautiful."; while The Connaught provides a discreetly grand online experience. Claridge’s, on the other hand, brings its Art Deco.
Nucleus art directed all-new photography for The Connaught and picture edited each image used for The Berkeley and Claridge’s websites.
Each hotel website was tagged for Google Analytics and then optimised to intercept relevant search engine enquiries, ensuring the specific guest target markets were identified and prioritised.
The Connaught was first to launch in March 2008 with The Berkeley website going live in late October. Claridge's new website completed the trilogy in November, while the new booking engine will go-live in early 2009.
Results
The Connaught immediately showed improved performance over the previous website in terms of visitor volumes, average pages viewed and conversion rates for online bookings. While it is still early days for The Berkeley and Claridge’s, both have showed marked improvements in key search results, visitor dwell times and conversion, with suites being particularly popular.
Mike Bonner, Maybourne Hotel Group's Director of Sales and Marketing said "Nucleus has sensitively interpreted the unique appeal of our fabulous hotels and designed chic, elegant websites that will strike a chord with our design-literate guests."
www.the-connaught.co.uk
www.claridges.co.uk
www.the-berkeley.co.uk
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