The Challenge
A newly launched luxury eco-tourism accommodation, a 750-acre rewilding estate in Cornwall, needed a direct-booking website built from scratch, plus a genuine strategy to reduce long-term dependency on OTA commission without sacrificing the occupancy and credibility a brand-new property needs in year one. The owners had received a competing agency proposal built around an exclusive, single-channel arrangement, which needed evaluating and countering with reasoned alternative strategy, not just a website build.
The Outcome
Site and Lodgify booking engine live, OTA connections established (Booking.com, Vrbo), a third channel (Oliver’s Travels) in progress, and a growing content and social foundation (Instagram approaching 400 followers) six months into the retainer relationship. First bookings hadn’t opened at time of writing, so booking-volume and revenue outcomes are genuinely too early to measure, not withheld.
The Approach
Ran a structured discovery-to-launch build: brand and story consultation, Ideal Guest Persona definition, sitemap and IA planning, then design and build in WordPress and Elementor Pro with Lodgify as the booking engine, connected via a channel manager to Booking.com and Vrbo, with a ‘Book Direct & Save’ incentive built in from day one. Delivered as a deliberate hybrid model, running OTAs and direct booking openly side by side, and explicitly rejected an exclusive single-channel arrangement proposed by a competing agency, on the reasoning that year one needs OTA-driven occupancy and reviews while an owned audience compounds underneath. Converted the relationship into an ongoing monthly retainer with a documented nine-month roadmap covering near-term channel alignment and long-term direct-relationship building (email, guest communications, social) in parallel. When the estate’s first stork release generated unplanned, significant press interest, adapted the site’s information architecture on short notice to channel that visitor interest toward the Rewilding section rather than let a booking-focused primary flow bury it.
