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| Monochrome has great design, development and project management skills |
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Bill Taylor
Website Development Manager
Advantage Travel Centres |
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Sarova Hotels: Content Management (Shado).
Sarova select Shado MX for Content Management
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To compete in the hotel business, you need to ensure your brand
stands out amongst the Hiltons and Marriotts of this world. To do that
you have to be distinctive and creative, not least of all on the Web
where increasingly people book their hotel accommodation.
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Sarova Hotels, an independently owned and operated group of hotels
based in London and throughout the south of the UK, isn’t one of the
‘big boys’ of the hotel industry, nor does it have a massive marketing
budget. With a slogan ‘individual hotels for individual people’, it’s
the image of individuality and distinctiveness that the company has
tried to reinforce through its new Web site, www.sarova.co.uk.
Moving from an online brochure
In early 2003, Sarova had what Chris Wood, the company’s marketing
manager, describes as “essentially an online brochure, not built with
modern technology.” Fundamentally, many hotel, and indeed general
travel and leisure sites were moving towards the use of Flash and Rich
Internet technologies to enhance their online activities - and drive
more business through online booking systems. “It became apparent that
using these technologies could completely transform our online
operations and the way that we could present our brand and create and
manage the content on the site. We knew we had to be clever with design
and resources to make our presence felt in this market,” added Wood.
One of the key issues for hotel industry Web sites is loss of business
through poor site navigation. Research has proven that users need to be
inspired whilst having easy access to hotel information and rates, or
they simply move on to another site. Recognising these problems
Sarova worked with Monochrome to address these issues and creating a
new website using Flash technology and Rich Internet Applications –
essentially to enhance the user experience.
New ECM system
Monochrome recommended and used a leading-edge Enterprise Content
Management (ECM) solution, Shado from Straker Interactive, which would
enable the marketing team at Sarova to create and control Web site
content, easily and cost-effectively.
“We had a rough idea of how content management software works, but
Shado basically gave us control over all the content we wanted on the
site - including text, graphics and images,” explained Wood.
“Originally when we met with Straker we talked about going on a
training course to use Shado, which in the end wasn’t required – Shado
is such a doddle to use.”
In the design and development of the new Web site, the marketing team
wanted Monochrome to extend and reinforce the Sarova brand. “We wanted
to give the impression that we are a group rather than a chain and that
we have four distinct properties that are individual and offer
different things to a discerning clientele. We didn’t want to clutter
the site with acres of text and make it hard for visitors to find
information, so the ability to control that easily using Shado was very
important to us. It was also crucial that whatever part of the site
visitors were in, it was easy to navigate to another area of the site
easily and quickly. As well as ease of use we wanted visitors to come
back again and again.”
360-degree visuals
Using an innovative menu-driven navigation system, visitors are now
able to explore any of Sarova's hotels with complete ease using
interactive 360-degree moving visuals. The Web site takes guests
through bedrooms and conference rooms, restaurants and bars, a health
and fitness spa, as well as a range of other facilities, and includes
everything they need to know to make their choice.
Monochrome also designed a unique, simple-to-use online booking system,
which gives instant room availability and rate details. “The booking
system is integrated with Shado to provide us with full control over
the content, images and appearance of the system, as well the overall
website,” added Wood.
Positive feedback
The feedback from both customers and travel trade professionals has
been very positive. “People say the site is very distinctive and easy
to use, and that as a small company we’ve been able to create something
very different – something that the ‘big boys’ are completely missing
out on. It has certainly helped us to create a strong online brand.
Site traffic was up by 20 to 30% in the last couple of months and
online bookings have continued to rise steadily. In short, the new site
continues to exceed our expectations.”
Wood believes that a good working relationship with both Monochrome and
Straker have contributed to the success of the site. “We’ve been
working with some very knowledgeable and professional people – they
have always been very lateral in their thinking and come up with some
great ideas and solutions for the site.”
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Shado.
A powerful enterprise content management (ECM) solution that is tried and trusted in multiple implementations.
more...
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