Multiple brands, one integrated solution
IHG
Equator delivered 40 websites across Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza brands, all managed from a central hub, with tiered permission levels for individual hotel content and revenue management input.
11 brands in almost 100 countries
Our project focused on two household-name brands in the UK and Ireland - Holiday Inn and Crown Plaza - and entailed building 40 websites for individual hotels, all managed through a central CMS.
Do you have a similar challenge?
Please get in touch to start a conversation about how our expertise can help your business thrive.
Singing from the same sheet
A key consideration was that all sites needed to be controlled centrally. Head-office branding, messaging and promotional activity would be applied once and cascaded down to all hotels in the network.
At the same time, management at each venue needed access to promote its own initiatives. Special rates for a big sporting event, for example, or a Spring push on wedding packages, would generally be left up to local managers.
The answer was a system of tiered permission levels allowing overall control from a central hub, plus the freedom to edit and upload local content in clearly defined areas.
A high-performance experience
As well as extending Umbraco as a sophisticated content management system (CMS) for the forty sites, we were given the objectives of improving ‘look-to-book’ ratios, room revenues and food and drink promos. The client also asked for faster site speed and download times, multi-lingual capabilities and full SEO management.
A seamless multi-site architecture
To accommodate dual branding and different access permissions from a single platform, we used global and local configuration tools, along with a brand switch. This meant changes, deletions and publishing could be done from one place, flowing down to the local level, with priority for global components to keep everyone on track.
The brand switch allowed for the design templates for either Holiday Inn or Crowne Plaza to be assigned to each hotel. Local configuration meant hotels could create and protect their own pages against global changes.
The result
We delivered a suite of impactful, engaging and customisable sites which gave IHG the brand, global and local levels of control they needed. All 40 sites are built on Umbraco, with the whole project completed on time and on budget in 12 weeks.
40 sites completed on time and on-budget in just 12 weeks.