Hotel Website Design and Launching Done Right: The Solmar Story

The Solmar Story – From Land’s End to the Forefront of the Digital Space

When Solmar Hotels and Resorts partnered with Milestone to create six new websites, we were truly excited to bring their incredible story to life. With its rich history deeply rooted in Los Cabos, Mexico since 1979, Solmar is a collection of 5 luxury hotels and resorts at the edge of the Baja Peninsula.

Each beautiful property delivers amazing vacation experiences, from luxury suites and villas to private white sand beaches to seaside spas and local cuisine. Their oceanfront and downtown resorts are enviably located between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez, a stone’s throw from the Arch of San Lucas. The accommodations are beautifully designed, the views are spectacular and the beaches are exclusive. It’s a story we wanted to share with the world.

Launched in July 2016, Solmar’s six new websites showcase their corporate identity and hotel collection with visually striking designs, stunning images, and engaging content to connect with their audience of luxury vacation and business travelers.

A Diamond In The Rough

The challenge: Solmar’s websites were outdated, with no differentiation in color, lackluster images and design, and navigation that was not user friendly. The websites were not optimized for search, did not showcase their unique features and destination, were not designed for user experience, and not responsive for mobile and tablet. The sites also did not contain user-generated or dynamic content, like events and blogs, for interaction, freshness, and engagement. They were hidden jewels with no presence, usability, or conversion elements.

Solmar ultimately decided Milestone would be their digital partner due to technology, innovation, and creativity. After highlighting how to position their brand in the digital sphere and capture customers across multiple devices along their digital journey our partnership formed.

Milestone’s Holistic Approach – It’s About More Than Building A Website

Our goal was to create a brand new corporate website and five unique – but cohesive – resort/hotel sites that showcased their outstanding features, breathtaking destination, and authentic spirit of hospitality. And of course make sure they were optimized for search, user experience, and conversion.

Milestone’s synergistic digital strategy included creating desktop and mobile sites, with social outreach and paid marketing, to connect with luxury vacation/leisure, destination wedding, and local business travelers. We designed six visually engaging websites with colors, fonts, and imagery aligned with the voice and identity of each hotel and resort. The visual aesthetics and content evoke emotion and tell the story of the Solmar experience.

We built fully optimized sites with robust navigation, schemas, conversion elements, and engaging content highlighting the unique selling points and destination – all reinforced with social signals and paid search. These sites are responsive for mobile and tablet to enhance the customer journey across all devices.

The structure of the corporate site showcases the properties in a highly visual way to highlight the collection’s spas, dining, and venues, driving traffic to each property site for booking. The individual sites reflect the unique and luxurious features of each resort, promoting the experience across the collection to further drive conversion. The look, feel and language create an experience that is warm and inviting, so guests feel like part of the family. This connects them to their audience of repeat customers who consider Solmar their Cabo home.

Here’s What We Did

The new sites for Solmar Hotels and Resort feature beautiful images and digital assets, interactive elements, including mouse-overs and video, and marketing messages that all take customers on a journey.

Enhanced User Experience – Custom Functionality, Architecture, and Animations

Each of the websites is designed with custom architecture and functionality, including auto-play videos as the home hero image, rotating carousels that highlight the unique services, and hover effects for interaction. YouTube videos add a dramatic sense of what it feels like on property and the extraordinary location with views at Land’s End in Cabo.

Connecting With Solmar’s Audience

Robust modules for weddings, dining, spas, meetings, and news created a highly experiential journey that reinforces the resorts as the destinations for celebrations and indulgence. Previously, wedding and spa content linked to external sites felt confusing and disconnected. Separate photo galleries for the weddings and spa segments with stunning images and videos further enhance the experience, adding credibility and trust. Reviews modules provide a place for user-generated content and comments for the resort’s loyal repeat guest to share and inspire.

Social Outreach Reinforces the Message

Integrated blog and event calendar modules were designed to engage new customers and share the Solmar story. Milestone continues to create blogs and social posts to keep the sites fresh, exciting, and in the conversation, while promoting local events, attractions, and what’s happening at the resort.

Driving Soft and Hard Conversions

We created unique wedding and meeting RFP pages to capture leads independently and with a targeted call to action. We also created a concierge page that directs guests to their external shopping cart site to purchase Solmar spa treatments, Cabo excursions, schedule/purchase transportation, add dining experiences, and all-inclusive meal plans.

The Fusion of Art and Usability

At Milestone, we believe that digital marketing is holistic: a fusion of art, design, technology, content, and usability. Everything we do is designed for the user experience, search presence, and essential touchpoints across every device. We build sites that are fully responsive for mobile and tablet so that customers can connect, engage, book and share. For Solmar, we wanted to make sure that their story came to life and that customers could find exactly what they were looking for – the ultimate Cabo vacation experience.

By Robin Leigh Kessler, Milestone Content Manager