The Challenge
Carlton Hotel Group, one of Ireland's fastest growing hotel brands, required a new system to power both its group and individual hotel websites. A new look and feel was also required to bring all sites in line with the group's 4 star luxury brand. As Carlton's most important 'shop window' and a key revenue driver for the group, maintaining and improving website traffic and bookings, particularly search engine traffic was also of paramount importance. Cost saving was another key driver. As an expanding group, Carlton required an in-house system that would cut down on expensive external design and development costs.

The Solution
The project involved a complete redesign and restructuring of www.Carlton.ie and the 7 individual hotel websites. By successfully bringing the group's portfolio of sites on to one platform, the group has achieved a new look and feel, in line with the company's 4 star luxury brand. In order to protect the established search engine rankings for the individual hotels websites, all of the individual hotel domains were retained, to ensure Google rankings would not be lost. By investing in a state-of-the-art content management system iPublish and a new eZine manager iMarket, Carlton are now in control of the software systems that drive traffic to the direct internet channel which is a very significant revenue driver for the hotels. Using a unique image editing tool and a series of template designs, iPublish has empowered Carlton's marketing team, allowing in-house staff to create new pages and images on the fly.

The Results

Increased Traffic and Revenue

"June has been a great month for our websites with exciting traffic and revenue growth. The redevelopment and integration of the group's portfolio of websites has been a great success with internet revenue growth outstripping the industry average. As the new site gets established, we are now seeing very exciting and steady growth, particularly over the last 4 weeks."

Jean O'Connell, Group Marketing and Sales Manager, Carlton Hotel Group.

Search Engine Visibility now better than ever!

"The challenge of bringing the portfolio of websites under one umbrella, while retaining our excellent search engine visibility was not an easy one. In the end, our decision to retain the individual hotel website domain names, while applying uniform branding paid off. We have achieved an integrated look and feel across the portfolio of sites, and our search traffic has not suffered. In fact, in many locations, we are seeing strong growth. Since the launch, traffic has increased by 80% versus last year, and year to date, our internet revenues are showing increases of over 50% in a number of locations."
John Varley, Operations Director.

Cross Selling Opportunities growing daily

The integration of 8 brand websites has increased the group's ability to cross sell, while retaining excellent search engine visibility. www.Carlton.ie expands into 7 individual hotel sites allowing online users to easily move between sites and view other Carlton Hotels, during their visit. Internal website referrals have increased by 20% since the site launch.

Cost and Time Savings achieved

The Carlton marketing team are now in control of the software systems that drive traffic to the group's websites, now the most important channel of distribution for the hotels. All content and imagery is now managed via an easy-to-use interface, which allows the in-house team to add new pages, change images and update content instantly and at no extra cost. This has resulted in a significant decrease in design and development costs.

Client Feedback
"We are very pleased to kick off our partnership with P3 Technology through the redevelopment of www.Carlton.ie and the individual hotel sites, a project that was completed on time and within budget." John Varley, Operations Director, Carlton Hotel Group. Both companies share similar values and strive for the highest standards in design, usability and search engine friendliness. Hence, this is just the first step to a series of continuous improvements to the group's web sites." John Varley, Operations Director, Carlton Hotel Group.