The Challenge
A genuinely special cottage was giving away margin to platforms it didn't need.
Gamekeeper's Cottage is a cherished rural holiday property with a loyal guest following and a distinctive character that sets it apart from generic rentals. Despite this, the owners were dependent on listing platforms that charged commission on every booking and controlled the guest relationship. They needed a website that could capture bookings directly, without losing the warmth and personality that makes the cottage special.
Our Solution
An atmospheric direct-booking site that sells the experience first.
We designed a website that leads with the story of the cottage, its history, its setting, its character, rather than just the facilities. The booking journey is simple and direct, with a clear calendar and pricing that make it easy to check availability and confirm a stay without leaving the site.
We've since rebuilt the site as a fully pre-built static site. Every page now arrives as finished HTML, with no heavy frameworks to download and run first, so the cottage's story and the booking bar appear almost straight away, even on a mid-range phone.
- Website design and development
- Atmospheric copywriting and content structure
- Direct booking calendar and availability integration
- Gallery presentation that showcases the property
- Rebuilt as a pre-rendered static site for near-instant loading
- Mobile-responsive build optimised for booking on any device
- SEO content for holiday cottage searches in the area
The Outcome
Growing share of commission-free direct bookings.
By owning the booking relationship, the owners of Gamekeeper's Cottage now retain more revenue per booking, build a direct guest relationship, and present their property in a way that no listing platform could replicate. The static rebuild took the site's Google PageSpeed score from 42 to 99 on desktop and from 29 to 93 on mobile in our latest tests, with the main content now visible in around two seconds on a phone instead of ten. Faster pages mean fewer guests give up before they reach the booking calendar.
“We now take a growing share of our bookings directly through the website. The site feels just like the cottage, warm, personal, and exactly what guests are looking for.”
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