mocean

Maybe a bit off topic, but trying to get inspiration for a friend (Web Designer) he's doing a website for a small luxury hotel.

So pretty simple question:
What's your favourite Luxury Hotel website? And Why?

francophile

FS- very user friendly, everything very well laid out, excellent descriptions of their products, nice pictures

RC- misspellings, incomplete and often outdated information

MO- OK, I'm not the biggest fan of this website

SL- another nice web site but slow to load

Pen- another beautiful web site with excellent photos. Alas, not as user friendly as FS. Their special packages are very difficult to book online.

schwarm

Tablet Hotels

I enjoy browsing this one.

flamboyant 1

FS and PEN have good floorplans of rooms and suites on their sites.

RC outdated. Dubai RC pictures are at least 4 years old. In reality there is a huge construction site behind and left of the hotel.

doc

Yes, probably, FS.

I do like this site too, but not as much as their hotel properties:

http://www.amanresorts.com/

and it's not real quick either!

Mark

luxury

Another vote for Four Seasons website ^ ^

DrivingRain

FS - pictures doctored to the point of outright misprepresentation. I'm still waiting to get the executive suite at the FS Houston that looks like the picture. Badly outdated information. FS Maldives was not properly updated months after the tsunami. Also a big for not being able to enter booking codes on the website's booking engine.

RC - pictures too small, information also badly outdated, but big ^ for the ability to enter rate codes into the booking engine.

I would suggest that he stay away from the big chains and focus on the individual websites from some of the Leading Hotels (http://www.lhw.com, which on it's own has had a poor website history). Going to each hotel's individual site should give him a good cross-section of how to and how not to build a luxury hotel website.

luxury

Perhaps some photos of the FS website are enhanced (particularly pool shots that make the pool look larger than it is) but your statement IMHO is a sweeping generalisation. I have seen many rooms at many FS hotels and 99% of the time the room is identical if not very similar to the photo shown. The FS website still gives you a wealth of information about the room, decor, meeting rooms, health club, restaurants including sample menus on their website.

From the independent hotel list, the Bristol Paris has a nice website, as does the Crillon and the Plaza Athenee. The websites are:

www.hotel-bristol.com
www.crillon.com
www.plaza-athenee-paris.com

obscure2k

I love the Kona Village Resort website.
http://www.konavillage.com/

ether

I like the banyantree.com website, great photos and description of their villas and properties.

DrivingRain

[QUOTE=luxury]Perhaps some photos of the FS website are enhanced (particularly pool shots that make the pool look larger than it is) but your statement IMHO is a sweeping generalisation. I have seen many rooms at many FS hotels and 99% of the time the room is identical if not very similar to the photo shown. [\QUOTE]

I'm not a photographer so I don't know the technical terms...but the look of the rooms in the pictures are not what the rooms actually look like. It's not that they make the room look bigger, or that the furnishings are embellished, or that the pools look bigger...again, that's not it. It's just the overall look of the room.

Some examples from places I have stayed in recently:
Slide 12 of Houston http://www.fourseasons.com/houston/v...o_gallery.html

or

Slide 3 of Chicago
http://www.fourseasons.com/image_lib..._web-large.jpg

or

Slide 7 of Boston
http://www.fourseasons.com/image_lib..._web-large.jpg

This is not that big of a deal. I know enough now to make a mental adjustment as I look through the photobooks. The biggest of all of the issues with FS' website is not being able to place a booking code in the res engine .

Ericka

What I really like about the Fours Seasons and Banyan Tree websites is the way they feature floor plans of the different levels of accomodation. @:-)

Mr. Strong

The website for Orient-Express Hotels is very very impressive. It is user friendly, there's a tremendous amount of information for each individual property, online reservations are easy and the pictures are great. The dedicated pages for Hotel Cipriani, Hotel Villa San Michele and Hotel Splendido are fantastic.

For a smaller hotel group, the website for Lungarno Hotels is nice too. It's slick, nice music, good pictures, informative, and user friendly.

While Amanresorts have spectacular properties, I think their website could use an upgrade. Nice picture galleries, however.

yycworldtraveler

I found this website to be quite well laid out for a small boutique luxury property.

http://www.theracha.com/

I ended up booking here...not as good a website...but nice photos.

http://www.phuketland.com/phuket_pav...uket/accom.htm

Raffles

Here are my pet hates about hotel websites for you to avoid:

Animations / movies / long intros - totally unncecessary

Booking engines that make it difficult to change dates to compare prices without going back to the start of the booking process

Websites that do not explain, in detail, about the different classes of room. FS is excellent for this. If I am going to pay a premium price for a room, I want to know exactly how big it is, whether it has a separate shower, DVD player, roughly what floor it will be on, what the view will be etc.