2009 - Monarch Holidays
New Monarch Travel Portal planning phase completed

Fly Monarch, Cosmos, and somewhere2stay are all part of the same travel group.  It was decided in May 2008 to merge all the flights, holidays and accommodation product into one consumer focused brand, creating a Monarch Travel portal.

The reasoning behind the strategy is to:

• Maximize advertising spend and build brand awareness by driving traffic to one website, instead of spreading costs across three specialist brands.
• Improve the websites search engine optimization, by structuring all products in a clear and logical way across the site and merging the rich content into one site.
• Capitalize on the improved cross product selling opportunities, for example by up selling a flight to include hotels and car hire
• Streamline IT costs and time by ‘upgrading’ the technology into one uniform development platform for all the sites.

The initial phase of the project was to duplicate and re-skin the current Cosmos and somewhere2stay websites so the customer was purchasing from Monarch.  The sites were branded Monarch Holidays and Monarch Hotels and sat nicely with he look of Fly Monarch.  This phase ensured that brand awareness was being built up before the full Monarch Travel portal was developed.  The existing Cosmos and somewhere2stay websites were then blocked from search engines and positioned as trade only websites.

Once phase one of the project was completed we began the planning and wire framing stage of the Monarch Travel portal build.  This is always an exiting part of a project where all the interested parties get involved.  These workshops provided us with enough information to wireframe the entire website.  The wireframes were then thoroughly analysed by all parties to ensure that usability, search engine optimization, content management and effective cross selling opportunities were all maximized to full effect.

The wireframes also provided a framework to establish build priorities, and project timings as well as highlighting where gaps in content appear, giving plenty of time for everyone to line up the ducks, so to speak.

It was decided that the Portal build would be split into 2 phases.  Phase 1 would include the overall framework of the website including all ‘research’ content (destination, hotel guides, attraction information etc) as well as the supporting legal content, frequently asked question and company information.  Phase 2 would include all the booking paths for each of the products.

Once we were all happy with the wireframes initial designs were produced and honed until again they ticked all the boxes, it was important that the online look and feel matched the off-line advertising campaigns.

We’re now at the ready to build phase 1.  We’ll keep you posted on our progress!

Read more in our Monarch Holidays Web Design Case Study