Newsletter microsite 2007 Straight from Sheffield, South Yorkshire Issue 06
TechnoPhobia go West
One mega client, one mega project - One mega website!
What can we say about Best Western? Well, for a start they are the World's biggest hotel chain. They have almost 300 franchises in this Island of ours, alone. They are also one of our biggest clients. Their super-duper, all singing, all dancing, all booking-much-easier-online website was unveiled to the World in the middle of December...
The largest hotel group in the world and its UK division has clearly defined business objectives and throughout 2007, Best Western Hotels will be striving to achieve their ambitions to increase overall market share, to enhance the perception of the Best Western brand and to improve their customer relationship marketing opportunities with both existing and new guests.
Businesses have been rising to the challenge of exploiting the online route to market for some time now and Best Western intend to raise the bar even further through the use of customer-centric approach and the inclusion of Web 2.0 features. www.bestwestern.co.uk has been re-launched with a newly designed and developed website demonstrating the power of the latest online technologies where the primary focus is on improving customer relations, focussing on the guests' needs and enhancing the entire online experience.
TechnoPhobia, the Sheffield-based digital agency, has focused on the 'user journeys' for the site; immense attention has been paid to the information architecture of the site in the design stage to ensure that content is presented that is relevant to each of the visitor.
Business users are clearly distinguished from leisure travellers; families' needs are recognised and catered for without intruding upon the preferences of the singles. The 'my details' section maintains a personal record for potential use in developing an excellent CRM programme and creating a secure, restricted area for users to log personal details. It also allows them to keep a resume of hotels that they have stayed at for their future reference.
Google maps have been integrated to enable easy search for hotels by region and city; additionally users are also able to link their stay to an event or attraction! For instance, by using the key word 'Grand National' the search will return all hotels within the Aintree area for that specific Saturday in April. This is complimented by the information rich descriptions of the hotels themselves. Iconography, tabs and coloured pages are used to indicate what a particular hotel offers; be it golf breaks, coastal retreats or health and beauty spas, all relevant to the users' needs. The advanced search and availability of information is so extensive that a user is able to find hotels in an area offering anything from Reiki to Michelin accredited food. A further search could be undertaken to determine if there is a nursery service within a two-mile radius, again all presented via the redesigned Best Western interface.
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) specifies that all websites must be accessible to everyone; TechnoPhobia have designed and built the redeveloped www.bestwestern.co.uk to adhere to the accessibility standards as outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). About 8.6m people in the UK - some 14% of the population - are registered disabled. [Disability Rights Commission]