Luxury hotel chain Four Seasons is planning to launch versions of its new website for Asia and the Arabic region this year to take advantage of different approaches to digital media.
The sites will be based on the website unveiled in January but customised for those regions as well as with some tweaks as the company gathers more intelligence on what works.
The site has been designed to incorporate a number of social media elements such as TripAdvisor reviews because the group researched how many sources, particularly unbranded ones, consumers reached out to when trying to find out about a trip.
Interactive marketing boss Robert Simon says:
"They were spending time on sources like TripAdvisor to find what property was relevant to them but there's no reason they should do extra work to find what they want. Consumers have been trained to start on sites like that. There is so much more information outside of brand.com sites."
He adds that the reviews giant is current the 19th biggest referrer of traffic for Four Seasons (compared with Expedia which is 90th) and that consumers coming from there are converting.
Simon also says he would like to see fewer numbers of visits from customers before purchase and for them to be convinced by the integration of social media but is realistic about the sources that have become trusted.
Launch of the new website, which was developed in conjunction with design agency Huge, originally caused a bit of a storm because of the $18m price tag attached to it.
However, Four Seasons later moved to clarify the sum on press material by saying it would be invested 'over time'.