Vintage Villas
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Allison Crumpton
White Stone Marketing
Dear Allison,
I just want to share with you how pleased I am with our new website, www.vintagevillas.com.
This is our 3rd website in 10 years and I have not felt that the other two sites adequately marketed our property. It is not just the photos and descriptions that were not sufficiently representing the hotel, it is the feeling, warmth, uniqueness and charm of Vintage Villas Hotel & Events that was lacking. I consider this the “it” factor. I can not fully put into words what “it” is that elicits these emotions while viewing a website but with our new site you have found “it”!
I fist stumbled on White Stone Marketing while searching the internet to find a company to build our new site. I stayed away from the larger hotel marketing companies because of these three reasons; conflict of interest, cost and the “it” factor.
First of all, I know that larger reservations companies that offer on-line booking engines also offer website development as a way to promote the hotel to internet searching guests. Their idea is to make your hotel appealing enough to have the internet searching guest make an on-line reservation so that they can take their percentage of the booking price. The problem is that these larger companies represent many hotels in Austin, including my competitors. They don’t care which hotel is chosen by the on-line client, as long as it is one they represent. Or in other words, their primary focus is to serve themselves in the industry and not you as business.
Secondly, the fee for developing a website was almost double what White Stone Marketing quoted.
Lastly, and most important, I could not find a website designed by the major reservations companies that had the “it” factor. Although the fundamentals were there, I could not find a site that I loved. I did not want a cookie cutter site. But yet, our new website did have to fall into a certain searchable and navigable predilection that has been set in mind of the internet searching guest. Thus, it had to be developed by a company that absolutely knew what the major design companies were doing successfully, but offer even more and including a personality.
I found White Stone Marketing by searching Google for terms such as, “best boutique hotel”. I eventually found www.archcapeinn.com. This was be best looking, emotional provoking, user friendly, well integrated, bold and beautiful site I had ever seen. Today, after www.vintagevillas.com it is my second favorite website. White Stone Marketing has the talent to create a website that fits into the same searchable patterns and yet set the property apart from its completion.
With my previous websites I found the development process was frustrating and draining. With our new site I was motivated to see final product. Shortly after a two hour conference call I was emailed a detailed outline. I broke the outline into small parts and got to work. I did a little bit of delegation as well as called Allison when I was stumped. Allison offered answers to my question with clear examples of how other hotels presented similar information and offered creative ideas. Just a couple of weeks after I received the outline I was sent three separate front page designs. They all looked superb and I asked for a combination of three different elements, one from each of the three that were sent. After seeing the www.archcapeinn.com site I had very high expectations. A week later, they sent me the reworked front page and it was exactly what I was looking for. Our new websites looks incredible and the design is very uniquely Vintage Villas.
This new website’s first test came only two hours after it was uploaded. I wanted to promote the hotel through www.groupon.com and sell Holiday gift certificates. We had a very small window of opportunity – the first weekend of December. The White Stone Marketing team worked diligently to make the 5am deadline and launched the site at 3am on Friday December 5, 2009. I thought that if the new site could sell 100 gift certificates over the weekend both the website and the promotion would be a success. Unbelievably, we sold 521 gift certificates at $60.00 each in 72 hours to future guest whose only basis for understanding what they were buying was from our site at www.vintagevillas.com. We completely paid for our site in just one day of selling gift certificates for future stays.
The new website has been active now for three weeks. And, just yesterday, I spoke to a guest who called saying that he wanted to book two rooms for the 24th and 25th of this December. When he called the front desk he asked for me specifically after getting my name from the new site. He went on to say that he was instrumental in the development of Sony’s and ESPN’s websites and the reason he called us to make his Christmas reservations was specifically due to the quality of our website.
Thank you Allison, Kim and the team at White Stone Marketing for creating a great new website for Vintage Villas!
Thomas Porter
Owner and General Manger
Vintage Villas Hotel & Events