Waterfront Lodge Motel

The Lowdown

The Waterfront Lodge Motel is a well appointed and no-frills establishment, offering easy access to Hobart and its many treasures without the hassle of being stuck in the crowded city.

Despite its many positives, the establishment owners had never dabbled their toes in the wide world of websites, and as such were losing out to other comparative motels and hotels which offered easy online booking.

Working with DigiBite Studio, The Waterfront Lodge Motel was able to have a website that offered a very clean and crisp first impression of the establishment overall. Crucially, online bookings were streamlined and curated on the website in such a way as to facilitate an overall user friendliness that is a cornerstone of the establishment's ethos towards their own customers.

Whilst the deadline was tight and the budget was small, the overall project was a shining example of streamlining functionality with purchasing intent, allowing this motel to adapt and thrive to market forces and customer demands.

A Fresh New Look

Prior to this, any effort to move into the digital realm was the very minimum of the word minimal, so effectively, our team were given a clean slate.

Our first priority was to create a clean looking website, one that was compatible with the ethos of the establishment, whilst also letting the many positives of the Waterfront Lodge Motel to really shine through on their own accord.

This involved internal stress testing of user friendly formats, with one eye on not making the overall website appear too busy or complicated.

The result is a crisp website that provides ample real estate for images to shine (more on this one later), and one that helps to sell the brand and the premises. This was all done on a small budget and within a four week turnaround, utilising a versatile and stable template with minor tweaks to accommodate the project's brief and desired outcomes.

Connecting to “The Booking Button”

The Booking Button is a market leading hotel inventory management system and online booking service, offering commission free booking services to hotel businesses. It provides the best of both worlds in regards to hassle-free management and customer facing accessibility.

Whilst the platform does advertise establishments such as the Waterfront Lodge Motel rather well, it is still no match for a sleek website that offers a first-look view of the premises. What's more, it isn't as interactive as a traditional website is, providing a stumbling block for those who wanted to explore the Waterfront Lodge Motel in more detail.

Our development team at DigiBite Studio were able to connect the awesome functionality of the platform with the new website. By doing this, our seamless connectivity of the two created a highly attractive and user friendly website, allowing the motel to sell itself and perform a core task all totally hands free.

Marketing for a New Age

Unfortunately for the Waterfront Lodge Motel, their establishment falls into one of the most hyper-competitive industries on Earth, one we call the tourism industry. Whilst the website hit all the right marks for accessibility and user friendliness, it still had a mountain to climb to fulfil the promise of a website that was efficient at garnering leads and enquiries.

Our marketing department ran our eye over current efforts, and instilled some vital changes. Some were as basic as employing more professional photography to showcase the modest beauty of their rooms on offer, replacing the older mobile phone taken photos of yesteryear. Others were more sophisticated, and helped the Waterfront Lodge Motel reach both new and existing audiences.

The most complex of these was to create a version of the website that displayed in Chinese (Simplified). By far, the Waterfront Lodge Motel's most common tourist from another country was those from China, but there were no digital marketing efforts that effectively capitalised it until we came in.

Creating such a site is rather complex, as each function, along with each word or character, has to not only perform the same action, but seamlessly be understandable between the two languages.

We also created an SEO campaign that, whilst extremely modest in scope, ultimately helped the website to be found far more easily through search engine use. This focused on generic search terms pertaining to the individual format of the rooms, particular intent (motel in hobart with car parking etc.) as well as a focus on allowing the content to not overpower the overall look and feel of the site.

What these combined efforts delivered was a website that turned this small establishment into one that was punching well above its weight. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Waterfront Lodge Motel's monthly traffic had risen by 150%, whilst they were frequently reaching full capacity for vacancies on a far more regular basis than previously.

Waterfront Lodge was configured to two languages, Chinese Simplified, and English. It was not an easy process to pull out the multi-site. Generally, the more content you have, the hard translate it will be. With Chinese being the most popular travellers, they decided to have Chinese Simplified on their website. Occasionally, Waterfront Lodge Motel had few Chinese Simplified Organic searches from google. But the translation certainly helps to contribute on many booking decisions.

If this case study sounds a little bit like what you're aiming to achieve, then get in touch with us right away, and our team will go over your existing efforts with a fine tooth comb. You can also fill out the enquiry form below with specifics of what you wish to achieve, if your project is a little bit different or has particular considerations.