Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is an international hotel management brand with deluxe and first class hotels, resorts and residences in sought-after destinations around the world.
The Challenge:
As part of its interactive marketing strategy, the Hong Kong-based luxury hotel operator engaged Siteworx to restructure and re-launch its website leveraging the SDL Tridion Web Content Management (WCM) system. Following the successful re-launch, and subsequent deployment of 22 sites in six languages—Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Spanish, and German – the Group engaged Siteworx to initiate its mobile strategy.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, a category leader among luxury hoteliers, wanted to reinforce its brand position and assume a leadership position in the mobile space. A new mobile site, initially targeting just Apple’s iPhone, would leapfrog the competition, and significantly differentiate the Group.
Soon after the project launch, the project team recognized that support for other devices would be critical to success. However, in the mobile space, the rapid introduction of new platforms and devices, such as Motorola’s Droid, makes predicting and building to the “must have” technology of the moment cost-prohibitive, if not technically challenging. What’s more, as support for more devices increases, so does the cost, due to the custom code required. In addition, each device, even using the same browser, renders differently.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group recognized that “out of the box” solutions in use by other hotel brands, such as Usablenet, were insufficient to the challenge. A customized solution would be required to achieve a level of elegance and specialized service on par with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s storied brand. To keep a tight reign on costs and schedule, the Siteworx team worked closely with Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group to nail down the must-have devices in the testing matrix, including the iPhone, Droid, as well as the Nokia E71 because of its widespread adoption in international markets.
The Siteworx Approach
Siteworx devised a content management approach, leveraging the SDL Tridion WCM, in which content is ultimately inherited from the main site and filtered down to the mobile site. That means Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s content owners can make changes in the Tridion WCM, rather than having to write entirely new content for the mobile experience.
The user experience design focused on creating a mobile browser experience that could approximate an experience of a native app. From a visual design perspective, Siteworx designers sought to create a clean, elegant design consistent with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group brand.
To meet the aggressive timeline and reduce development costs, Siteworx engaged a testing service that provided virtual access to all phones on both the AT&T and Verizon networks. The test plan also accounted for backward compatibility—as far back as two years—for supported devices.
The Results
Siteworx delivered a feature-rich mobile site attuned to the specialized needs of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s super affluent luxury clientele. Key features include:
- Hidden address bar offers clean, sleek design with a “native app” experience
- Find the nearest hotel uses GPS and long/lat to take you to the home page of the Mandarin Oriental nearest your location
- Photo galleries swipe to next picture
- 3rd party booking engine integration
- Phone numbers prompt phone dialing functionality
- Email addresses prompt email functionality
- View map Google maps integration
- Read Me Later sends an email with the URL for the desktop version of the page (redirects to the m.mandarinoriental.com page if accessed later from a mobile device)
Features aside, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group mobile website project achieved break-even and a measurable ROI in just six weeks including:
- Revenue in the first month from mobile bookings covered project costs
- Mandarin Oriental’s mobile strategy has put them significantly ahead of other luxury brands as far as a multi-device strategy, past the desktop
- The Case Study: Mandarin Oriental Creates a Brand-Appropriate Mobile Experience by independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc., cites the implementation as a best practice case for delivering brand-appropriate mobile experiences