A new brand, and the keys to its own website
Your competitors move fast online. Does your website? City Lodge Hotel Group was relaunching under a new brand and wanted a website to match: one that kept pace with its competitors and that its own teams could run. That's what we delivered, booking included.
At a glance
- 01
Client. City Lodge Hotel Group, listed on the JSE.
- 02
Industry. Hospitality, for business and leisure travellers.
- 03
Scale. 56 hotels across four brands, in three countries.
- 04
Delivered. Public website, custom content platform and booking engine.
- 05
Team. Five disciplines in one team, working with their design partner.
A new brand, and a website to match
The group had launched a new brand, built around a new promise to its guests, and wanted its website to carry that brand as confidently as its hotels did.
The group wanted the teams who know its content best to run the website directly, and to move as fast online as anyone in its market.
And booking had to keep working smoothly throughout, across every hotel, against live rooms and rates.
They needed a new front door, and the keys to it.
We gave them the keys.
We built both halves from scratch: the public site, and a content platform behind it where their own teams change almost any element on any page. Booking is wired end to end into their hotel system.
From the first day, every brand and every hotel ran on one platform, and the people who know the content best were the ones publishing it.
Their website, their content, their call. That's what having the keys means.
How we built it
One team, working in two-week sprints with a demo every fortnight, owned the build from the first sprint to launch. These are the decisions that mattered.
Two halves, built for what each has to do
The public site is built for the speed and search visibility a booking site depends on. Behind it, a separate API and content platform does the heavy lifting. Each half can change without breaking the other. Every page is built to work as well on a phone as on a desktop, with the new brand's image-led look intact on both.
Why we built it custom
Every brand, dozens of hotels, room types, offers that apply to some hotels and not others, and legal documents for each country: that content model doesn't fit a standard product without compromise. So we built one shaped around it instead of bending the business to a product.
A content platform built around how they work
Hotel pages, room types, special offers, menus, investor documents, legal terms, job listings and partner benefits are all managed in one place. Almost every element on every page is editable, and the marketing, operations and investor relations teams each work in the parts they own. An offer can be aimed at one hotel, one brand or the whole group, so a campaign goes out exactly where it should and nowhere else.
Booking guests finish themselves
Guests search across every hotel, against live availability and rates pulled from the group's hotel management system. They pay, change or cancel a booking, and check in online before arrival. Guests do it all online, at any hour.
Every connection a guest touches
Payments, a chatbot, SMS and email, maps and guest reviews are all connected to the booking journey. And a partner integration applies the right offer automatically, so a guest never has to ask.
Shaped by the people who use it
Every two weeks, the teams who would run the platform saw working software and shaped what came next. Editors tried real pages, not mock-ups, so by launch the platform already fitted how they work.
Quality built into every release
Separate staging, test and production environments meant every change was proven before guests saw it. Automated regression tests ran with each release, and production monitoring flagged issues before anyone had to report them.
Handing over a live brand
The new website and platform launched together, replacing both old sites in one move. Because staging and test mirrored production, every change had already been proven in front of the business before a guest saw it. The launch was stable, with no major issues after go-live.
A team shaped to the work
A project manager led two developers, growing to three as the build accelerated, with a dedicated UX/UI designer, a DevOps engineer, a QA coordinator and a software tester. We built to the brand's designs alongside their design partner.
Changed in minutes, by their own team
A new rate, an offer or a hotel page goes live when their team decides, without a developer in the loop.
Their investor relations team keeps investor documents current the same way, on its own schedule.
The website moves as fast as the market.
Kept on from launch day
The group moved us onto a monthly arrangement the day the platform went live, and it has run ever since, across more than one phase of work.
Keep going
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