One of the UK’s most stylish and distinctive travel brands
Rocco Forte Hotels is a collection of around 11 properties in six countries. Each property is different in style and history, though they’re united by a commitment to quality and luxury. When the company first approached Equator, each hotel had its own website. We gave the brand consistency, with a single experience that reflects the unique quality of each hotel, and which works for different languages and markets.
Can we help your brand too?
Sometimes less is more, and by turning 11 different sites into one, we helped make a diverse portfolio of hotels into a strong, unified brand. We could do something similar for your business, so please get in touch.
Many styles, one standard
Our design for the new website embodies the style and elegance of this diverse collection of hotels while keeping the brand consistent, and the presentation simple. From Scotland to Shanghai and from purpose-built resort to historic city-centre landmark, each property is unique, and each is beautifully showcased on the site.
Pages are image-led, with breathtaking photography of rooms, restaurants, bars and spas. The site allows direct booking with each hotel, and offers information and inspiration for conferences, weddings and glamorous product-launch events. Striking imagery works within a streamlined structure to tell an enticing story.
Luxury in any language
A key part of the job was the need to make the site work in eight different languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian. We had to create a system to handle page-level translations, plus a back-up default.
While swapping out English for Italian or French is relatively straightforward, Arabic - which reads right to left - and Chinese present major design challenges. More importantly, it soon became clear that a direct literal translation wouldn’t work in every case, because of different cultural references and priorities. To solve the problem, we briefed creative translators to consider each native market with care, and rewrite text accordingly.
The result is a flexible system which allows Rocco Forte staff to tailor each page to each market as required, without hiding content where it’s not translated, but communicating it in a clear, concise way.
Technical implementation
We created a full end-to-end booking engine with multi-lingual and multi-currency capabilities, building the content management system to allow language overrides by component. Room availability and pricing is handled by SynXis, with booking capabilities covering room, table and gift options, plus reservation management via the login area.
The client's dream site
We built our client’s dream site, creating an online brand unlike anything else in the hospitality sector. Our approach seamlessly managed multilingual site pages, while keeping the overall effect simple and clean. People loved it and booked more than ever.