About Westville Hotel: The Project
Westville Hotel is a four-star boutique property in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. The hotel serves both leisure and corporate guests, offering guest rooms, self-catering apartments, an on-site restaurant, and event facilities including weddings and private functions. It occupies a strong position in the local market but needed its digital presence to match its on-site offering.
When the team came to ProfileTree, their existing website had three clear problems: staff could not update it independently, the underlying theme had security vulnerabilities that posed risk to guest data, and the design no longer reflected the hotel’s four-star positioning.
The brief was straightforward: rebuild it properly, make it manageable in-house, and get it ranking for the search terms that bring direct bookings. This project forms part of ProfileTree’s wider digital marketing work in Northern Ireland, supporting hospitality and tourism businesses across the region.
What We Did: The Web Design Approach
Technical Foundation
The first step was replacing the outdated WordPress theme with a modern, secure, and fully responsive framework. The old theme was not just outdated aesthetically — it lacked the capability for proper backups and was a security liability in a sector where guest data protection is critical. The new theme resolved these vulnerabilities and provided the technical base for everything that followed: faster load times, full device compatibility, and a platform stable enough to optimise.
Structure and User Experience
We restructured the site’s layout with the booking journey in mind. Hotel guests typically arrive at a website having already decided they want to stay in a particular area. The job of the website at that point is to convert their intent into a direct booking rather than send them back to an OTA. That means clear navigation, fast access to room types, pricing, and availability, and a booking prompt that is visible without scrolling.
We redesigned the header and footer to carry streamlined navigation and quick-access contact information. The page hierarchy was rebuilt so that key content (rooms, dining, events, local area) was reachable within two clicks from any page.
Content Management and Staff Training
We implemented a modular block system throughout the site, allowing the hotel’s team to update content on core pages (rooms, dining, offers, local attractions) without developer input. Seasonal promotions, updated pricing, and new offers can now go live within the day. This is the operational change that sustains the SEO gains over time; a site that gets updated regularly outperforms one left static.
We also delivered tailored training resources covering everyday content updates, blog posting, and basic SEO maintenance. The goal was genuine independence, not reliance on the agency for routine changes.
Results
The Westville Hotel website now ranks for 676 organic keywords, with a meaningful proportion in the top three positions for transactional search terms – the queries made by people actively looking to book a hotel, not just researching a destination. Organic search traffic significantly outperforms the hotel’s paid advertising traffic, with organic generating approximately 7,700 monthly visits compared to 188 from paid campaigns.
The website is now maintained actively by the hotel’s own team. Seasonal content, offers, and local event coverage go live without agency involvement. The long-term SEO value of a site that is consistently updated, rather than left static for months, compounds over time.
How ProfileTree Approaches Web Design for Hotels
Every hotel website project we take on starts with the same question: where are the bookings currently coming from, and how much is OTA commission costing the business? The answer shapes the entire strategy.
For most hospitality clients in Northern Ireland, the priority is building a technically sound WordPress website that performs well in local and regional search, gives the team full control over content, and supports a direct booking pathway that competes with OTA listings on trust and convenience.
That means getting the fundamentals right before anything else: secure hosting, fast load times, proper schema markup for hotel properties, and a content structure that Google can read and rank. It also means building for the long term, a site the hotel can manage and update, so it stays relevant in search rather than slowly falling behind.
If you run a hotel or hospitality business in Northern Ireland and want to reduce OTA dependency through organic search, our web design services for hospitality businesses cover the full process from strategy through to launch and ongoing support.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take for a hotel website redesign to show results in search?
For most hotel website projects, initial ranking improvements become visible within three to four months of launch, with more significant organic traffic gains typically showing between six and twelve months. The timeline depends on the competitive landscape for your location, how actively the site is updated after launch, and whether the technical foundations (site speed, schema markup, mobile performance) are properly implemented from the start.
Can a hotel website realistically compete with Booking.com and Expedia in search results?
Yes, but not on the same keywords. OTAs dominate broad transactional terms like ‘hotels in Belfast.’ What hotel websites can rank for (and often outperform OTAs on) are specific, long-tail queries: ’boutique hotel Enniskillen,’ ‘four-star hotel with restaurant Fermanagh,’ ‘hotel near Lough Erne.’ These searches come from guests who are closer to booking and who tend to convert at a higher rate. A well-structured hotel website targets these queries specifically.
What should a hotel website include to encourage direct bookings?
The most important elements are a booking button visible without scrolling, clear room descriptions with accurate pricing, authentic photography, guest reviews displayed on-site, and a frictionless booking process that does not redirect guests through multiple pages. Local SEO signals also matter: mention nearby attractions, optimise page titles for location-based queries, and include a map. GDPR-compliant handling of guest data should be visible and clearly communicated.
Do you work with hotels outside Belfast?
Yes. The Westville Hotel project was based in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. ProfileTree works with hospitality businesses across Northern Ireland and Ireland, including rural and regional properties. Location does not affect the scope of the project; most of the work is done remotely, with on-site visits arranged where needed.
What does a hotel website redesign typically cost?
Project costs vary depending on the size of the property, the number of pages required, whether booking engine integration is needed, and the level of ongoing support. We provide detailed scoping and transparent pricing before any work begins. Most hospitality website projects for small to mid-size hotels in Northern Ireland fall within a range we can discuss during an initial consultation. Contact us for a specific quote based on your requirements.
