Hostal de la Gavina is one of the grand dames of the Spanish luxury hotel sector, with a history dating back to the 1920s, and still owned by the family of the founder. Occupying a stunning location on a headland on the Costa Brava, and overlooking the Bay of Sant Pol, Hostal de La Gavina was the first hotel in Spain to become a member of The Leading Hotels of the World.
The brief
The current website is the third generation of sites that we have provided for the hotel. The brief from the owning family and the General Manager was simple – showcase Hostal de La Gavina’s spectacular selection of accommodation, activities, dining options and so on in a modern, stylish and responsive multi-lingual website.
With Hotel Miró, the brief was to take over and manage an existing website built on a commercial WordPress theme as well as the associated SEO and Adwords campaigns. Since taking charge of the site, we have rewritten some of the theme code to better handle the CSS changes the previous agency had applied, and also taken steps to improve site speed, often a weak point of commercial multi-themes.
Recently, we have developed a dedicated ecommerce system allowing the hotel to offer Gift Vouchers direct to website visitors without requiring a third party system.
Having designed and built the Aethos brand site, the next step was to develop a website design for their various hotels. Uisng the brand site as a basis, we created a variation that would best showcase their unique properties, including a range of colours that can be selected in each case according to the style of hotel – city, beach, mountain, etc. Aethos Saragano is a good example of this project.
As a startup hotel company, Aethos looked to us to provide a stylish web presence quickly and smoothly. Working directly with their Chief Exec and within thier brand guidelines, we pulled together a design for their brand site that showcases the company’s vision and built it in multiple languages in a very short timeframe.
Gran Hotel Domine had an existing single page website that clearly needed updating to showcase the refurbished rooms, suites and other facilities of the hotel. Staring with a bespoke design, we developed a complete new website, including reworking certain elements of the design part way through to highlight new facilities being brought online.
Recently, we have developed a dedicated ecommerce system allowing the hotel to offer Gift Vouchers direct to website visitors without requiring a third party system.
As with all restaurants, the key to getting this website right was to present the right mix of the visual with the practical. Website visitors need to be inspired by the images of the dishes, the staff, the restaurant itself, but also be able to find pertinent information quickly, and be able to book a table in just a few clicks.
Together with the owners and managers of La Taverna del Mar, we finalised a design for the new website that encapsulated the history of the restaurant, its informality, proximity to the sea and its primary offering of seafood dishes. The previous site we built for them was particularly pleasing from a visual aspect but was done before responsive website became such a basic requirement, so it was decided that we should maintain the style of the previous site to the greatest extent possible, whilst improving the usability, making the site responsive, permitting management of the site via the WordPress CMS and so on.
