Oak Bay Beach Hotel
- Client Name
- Oak Bay Beach Hotel
- Website
- www.oakbaybeachhotel.com
- Year
- 2021
- Category
- Hospitality
Oak Bay Beach Hotel
The Oak Bay Beach Hotel in Victoria, BC is world-renowned for its stunning views, gracious hospitality, and top-of-the-line amenities. From curated dining experiences to luxurious spas, the hotel offered a comfortable and elegant respite for local and international travelers to the coast of Vancouver Island.
Unfortunately, the hotel’s beauty and refinement lacked a digital counterpart. When online experiences became amplified due to the global pandemic, it became apparent that the website left much to be desired. Hamstrung by a rigid template, Oak Bay’s website had become a Frankenstein of plugins and third-party tools cobbled together to create a less-than-ideal experience for both internal and external users. It was time for a redesign – one that would finally showcase the hotel’s exquisite experience online.
Services
- User Experience Design
- Website Design
- Wordpress Development
- Copywriting
An Elevated Style
Successfully translating real-world aesthetics into a digital experience depends on the details. Through style tile concepts, we worked with Oak Bay’s team to land on a perfect combination of palette, typography, and visual language that would communicate the same feeling of walking through the hotel’s beautiful architecture. The use of ample whitespace connoted a sense of airiness and openness. A slightly muted palette helped to create a relaxing and peaceful impression on users. And a strong use of imagery helped to convey the allure of the hotel at every opportunity.
Streamlining the Experience
Part of Oak Bay’s frustration with the website was its navigation. A cluttered main navigation with critical information buried on pages meant that customers continuously called the hotel with questions that could easily be answered on the website. Long pages with rigid blocks of content meant that key details about reservation policies, booking information, and COVID-19 guidelines were relegated to hard-to-find areas.
To simplify things, Massive went back to the core journeys of Oak Bay’s users. Users either needed to book a stay, visit the spa, host an event, or reserve a table. These became the pillars of the website’s navigation under which the various offerings of the hotel were organized. To facilitate easy navigation, pages featured links to other relevant content so that users could easily find their way if they got lost. Finally, Massive created a “What You Should Know” and an FAQ section on each page to answer the most commonly asked questions and hopefully save the hotel a few phone calls!
