Starting in 2001, Critical Mass was selected by Hyatt Hotels to completely redesign and unify the greater family of Hyatt including Hyatt.com, four sub branded sites and 123 individual hotel property sites. The new site had to express the "Hyatt Touch," while also allowing individual hotels and brands enough flexibility to showcase their own local image and offerings.
The family of Hyatt sites lacked a content management system, which made it difficult for Hyatt to make frequent changes to content and images.
Hyatt also had inconsistent standards, visual identities and applications throughout its site network. Many of Hyatt's larger resort hotels and brand sites had created separate sites outside of corporate design guidelines, privacy policies and hosting. Finally, from a brand perspective, the site was text heavy and uninviting with an image that wasn't living up to the Hyatt brand essence.
Using ATG technology, Critical Mass designed and constructed a completely new Hyatt.com. We re-branded the site, re-tooled key applications (including reservations, registrations and promotions applications) and implemented a highly flexible content entry tool (CET) to allow over 123 individual properties and the Hyatt Vacation Ownership properties to manage their own content and images without compromising corporate brand guidelines. The new personalization features benefit both customers and Hyatt. For customers, the site now remembers their address and most frequent destinations as well as room preferences to speed up the booking process. Guest interests such as golfing, resorts or group meetings are also saved for quick reference and linking to special offers. For Hyatt, the personalization strategy, combined with content management, allows them to target customer promotions based on specific interests. The result is an experience that caters to the individual and to segments throughout the entire site. For the network of local Hyatt properties, we developed a consistent design derived from the look and feel of Hyatt.com. We built a custom Web-based content entry tool on top of Dynamo and Oracle which allows local property managers to make changes to their individual sites and meet local needs.
For the network of local Hyatt properties, we developed a consistent design derived from the look and feel of Hyatt.com. We built the custom Web-based CET, allowing local property managers to make changes to their individual sites and meet local needs.
The new Hyatt.com has seen a dramatic increase in traffic and e-mail sign-ups. In the first year after re-launching the site, sales performance nearly doubled, and the site has shown sales increases every month since its launch as customers create profiles and develop a relationship with Hyatt. Hyatt now has a unified look across their entire network of sites. All 123 domestic properties, Hyatt Vacation Club, Gold Passport, Golf Hyatt and Spa Hyatt follow corporate brand guidelines yet have a flexible, individual look that can be customized to their individual needs. Hyatt.com was recently recognized by Advertising Age's Marketing 50 report as one of the year's biggest brand successes.
