XPORT reference Gastwerk Hotel Hamburg

The challenge

Let there be light! The gasworks in the west of Hamburg once supplied the city with light. In 2000, after 130 years, Hamburg's first design hotel moved into this brick building. As a reminiscence of the history, the new resident is called the Gastwerk Hotel.

XPORT was allowed to develop the first hotel website back then. Now it was time to look at this site in the light of new technical requirements and design trends and to create a relaunch with a design focus.

Like an enticing shop window, the new hotel website was to showcase the unique rooms and make it attractive for visitors to book directly. The requirements for configuring a conference event, requesting spa treatments and reserving a table in the Mangold restaurant were also quick and easy.

"Communicating history", "state-of-the-art design" and "conversion optimization" were the three requirements for the website, which XPORT and the hotel developed together. After all, the screen design of the new website should not only look good, but should ultimately generate and sell bookings.

0
Lofts
0
Conference rooms and winter garden
0
Mangold Restaurant & Mangold Bar

Gastwerk Hotel Hamburg Boardroom 2 2048px

Restaurant Mangold in the Gastwerk Hotel Hamburg

The design

Without having to adhere to the original corporate design, XPORT approached the new design using new colors, image styles and other elements. The screen designers put together their creations for the client in mood boards. The central element is the masonry of the Gastwerk, or more precisely the brick. Its color and shape became the starting point for the graphic considerations.

Programming

The programmers then had the job of transferring the creative wow effect into a functioning application. And for all common or internet-enabled devices, browsers and screen sizes. This is how the "Brick Game" was created, which you can try out here.

An individual conference configurator has been embedded into the website for event planners. SPA guests can use the "shopping cart" to conveniently request their beauty treatment with specific dates and services. The press area, integrated like all other functions via the ProcessWire content management system, helps hotel employees to publish PR material quickly and easily.

Guests who check in at the hotel and use the in-house WiFi are greeted with a landing page tailored to their information needs.

For all this and more, XPORT tapped into the interfaces to Squarelovin, the booking engine SynXis, the CRM tool Dailypoint and the restaurant booker OpenTable.

All good reasons first! Whether a guest is interested in your hotel is decided within milliseconds of accessing your website. In addition to an emotionally designed header area and an easily accessible booking entry point, your USPs are also important - why exactly should guests book your hotel and why should they book it directly with you? Guests don't have to search long for the answers to these questions at Gastwerk: they are right at the top. Editors can edit them at any time if one or two good reasons are added.

Would you like to increase your direct bookings? Then we have a match!

All conversion entry points bundled together We bundle all sales channels via a central quick booking entry point: Room booking via the SynXis IBE, conference request, table reservation and wellness treatment. Advantage for the guest: faster access to the product. Benefit for our customer: significant increase in conversion figures. Perfectly measurable thanks to our tracking concept.

More information about our hotel websites

Conference configurator The inquiry processes in the conference business are time-consuming, as conference bookings are generally not as standardized as room bookings. Requesting the relevant data from the customer and then preparing the quotation costs valuable working time. Our solution: interested parties can use an interactive conference configurator to pre-configure their conference and send it to the hotel with all the data relevant to the offer. This significantly shortens the subsequent processing time by the sales team.

Do you want to save time in the conference business? Then we should talk.

Back to brick The basis of every XPORT hotel website: digital interpretation of the hotel brand essence. The Gastwerk stands for modern design in historic brick architecture. The brick design of the Gastwerk website quotes these defining elements with large-scale elements that incorporate the bricks in form and color without historicizing them.

The result

Who could describe the result of these services better than the customer himself? Sally Möller, Online Marketing Manager of Fortune Hotels, to which Gastwerk belongs, summarized the collaboration with XPORT and the result as follows:

Customer statement

"WEBSITE RELAUNCH - WE DID IT!
As a Hamburg design hotel, we have been working with XPORT for years. Our Gastwerk Hotel has grown a lot in the online sector with XPORT in recent years, adopting trends and optimizing them digitally and web-based. A website is the heart of an online presence, so after several years a new one was needed: Together with XPORT, we started the "Website Relaunch" project, carried it through and ultimately completed it successfully. It was a long and intensive journey with many thoughts, design agreements, technical and visual wishes, content maintenance, team calls, technical challenges, changes to plans and new know-how in our luggage. When we say that the relaunch project was quick and easy, this is not entirely true. Looking back, we can say that both we as the hotel's marketing department and XPORT have grown a lot from this project. We solved challenges in terms of time, communication and deviations in ideas together with open discussions and team spirit and would take these experiences with us into the next relaunch (which will come).

Corona was then added during the course of the project. Speaking as a hotel, we can say that this hit us hard and the project had to suffer and wait, among other things. But on the other hand, the shutdown allowed us to invest the time available in the website project in the best possible way.

Is this the right time to go live with a new website? This is difficult to judge. Right now, the number of calls and bookings cannot be compared with what we were used to before the pandemic. As soon as the booking situation has returned to normal, we will be able to see the results properly. Nevertheless, a new website in Corona times also reflects our optimism for the Gastwerk Hotel and our industry - we want to look to the future with renewed energy, enthusiasm and confidence and not lose our passion for the hotel and restaurant industry. This attention to detail is clearly reflected in our new website. We are proud of the result, we are happy every day about the small individual details, our new web CI colors, the presentation and visual language and simply about the overall project: New Gastwerk Hotel Website. Thank you, XPORT!"

Mobile

The Gastwerk hotel website was conceived and designed "mobile first". This is because the smartphone is increasingly the first touchpoint used to find inspiration for a city trip, discover a hotel, compare prices and read reviews.

The implementation of the conference configurator for the mobile view was a particular challenge. Event planners and family managers also reach for their smartphones or tablets to find the best locations for their next seminar or anniversary.