Maybourne, Website Design Case Study

IA, UX/UI and design system across six luxury properties and one corporate platform, Claridge's, The Connaught, The Berkeley, the Riviera and Beverly Hills, each with its own voice, all selling the same thing through the same booking flow, built to win bookings back from OTAs and stop losing margin every time the site couldn't carry the sale.

Maybourne high fidelity welcome homepage design

Overview

Process

Overview

The Maybourne digital ecosystem. Six hotel brands and a parent corporate platform on one editorial system, designed to win back the bookings each property was losing to third-party channels.

Scope: IA, UX/UI and design system across six luxury properties and the parent corporate platform, with the booking flow that sits underneath all of them.

The tension sat in plain sight from week one. Brand wanted distinction across six voices; revenue wanted conversion across one booking flow. The resolution: make editorial do more of the persuading so the booking flow had less to do, on a system that absorbed six voices without forking underneath.

Impact

01Built the direct site to win volume back from OTA channelsBuilt the direct site to win volume back from OTA channels
02Reset IA around the journeys carrying the most commercial weightReset IA around the journeys carrying the most commercial weight
03Led each template with the action that mattered most on the pageLed each template with the action that mattered most on the page
04Made editorial do more of the persuading so booking did lessMade editorial do more of the persuading so booking did less
05Held six brand voices on one product system without forking itHeld six brand voices on one product system without forking it
06Handed over a platform the in-house team ships against without an agencyHanded over a platform the in-house team ships against without an agency

The Process

Discover

Define

Ideate

Design

Validate

Phase 01 / 05

Discover

Get close to guests, staff and the wider luxury hospitality market.

Stakeholder interviews
User surveys
User interviews
Measurement framework

The Discovery Phase

Hopes and fears workshop

A facilitated session with brand, marketing and revenue leads to surface what the new site had to do (drive direct bookings) and what it couldn't break (each hotel's distinct character).

Stakeholder interviews

Interviews across brand, marketing, revenue and front-of-house surfaced the trade-off the project hinged on: a single coherent group identity vs. six properties with their own voice.

User interviews

Existing guests trusted the brand but not the booking flow, opaque rates, weak destination content, a payment step that broke confidence.

Measurement framework

Agreed success with the data team upfront, direct bookings, time on editorial templates, OTA dependency. The redesign had a commercial bar to clear, not just a visual one.

The Definition Phase

User Archetypes & Personas

Three guest personas & 20+ archetypes, corporate planner, destination-led leisure guest, returning regular, each opening the site for a different first action. No single hero could serve all; each template leads with the action carrying the most commercial weight on that page.

Customer journey mapping

Mapped the guest journey from inspiration to post-stay. The biggest lever wasn't the booking flow, it was the editorial in front of it. Guests who arrived at booking already decided dropped off less and called the contact centre less.

The Ideation Phase

Card sorting

Open and closed card sorting with guests showed how content actually clusters in their heads, the input that broke a long-running internal debate about labels and grouping.

IA & Sitemap

Restructured around the journeys that drive bookings, hotel, destination, editorial. Same template logic carries the corporate site and any new property without rework.

Tree testing

Validated the new IA in a text-only structure with real guests, fixing the labels and dead-ends costing reach before any visual work began.

The Ideation Phase

Card sorting

Open and closed card sorting with guests showed how content actually clusters in their heads, the input that broke a long-running internal debate about labels and grouping.

IA & Sitemap

Restructured around the journeys that drive bookings, hotel, destination, editorial. Same template logic carries the corporate site and any new property without rework.

Tree testing

Validated the new IA in a text-only structure with real guests, fixing the labels and dead-ends costing reach before any visual work began.

The Design Phase

Concept exploration

Pushed layout, type and editorial tone across the corporate and hotel templates. The system that survived absorbed six voices through tone, photography and pacing, no per-property template tree underneath.

Design system

One component library, two layers. Shared primitives, type, spacing, motion, booking patterns, hold product behaviour constant. A brand layer above lets each property feel distinct through voice, photography and pacing without forking the system underneath.

Wireframes

Locked structure and content priorities in low fidelity so review cycles argued about what each template should lead with, not what it should look like. The visual work started from a settled base.

High fidelity designs

Six distinct hotel UIs alongside the corporate identity, each property with its own personality, all unmistakably part of one Maybourne system.

Click below to view the live websites:

Maybourne Claridge’s The Connaught Maybourne Riviera Maybourne Beverly Hills

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The Validation Phase

Prototyping & user testing

Tested booking, editorial templates and destination pages with current and prospective guests. Two findings reshaped the build: rate logic had to surface earlier to hold trust at payment, and editorial pacing decided whether guests arrived at booking already convinced. Both fed into templates before launch.

The Validation Phase

Prototyping & user testing

Conclusion

A platform Maybourne can grow into, six brands today, the next property without a parallel design build.

The system covers editorial, booking, room detail and destination content across all six properties and the corporate site. Booking flows are shorter, the visual language reads as one brand, and the in-house team ships new pages without a designer in the loop.

Key decision: held six brand voices on one product system instead of forking it per property. Tighter constraints on each hotel; meant a new property could launch without a parallel design build.

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