FINE Relaunches Kimpton Hotels' Website with New Web-Experience
Digital agency FINE today announced the launch of a completely reinvented, fully responsive web experience for long-time client Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants. The new site represents a dramatic design evolution and modernization of the Kimpton spirit and style, integrating multiple new tools and services to create a seamless guest experience: booking engine, meeting and events tools, Instant Meetings reservations, and much more.
Decidedly more than just a simple redesign of the former web presence, FINE took a “from scratch” approach to the website project, providing Kimpton with a deeply engaging site based on a “guest first” approach that is adaptive to user needs. In particular, the site is fully responsive across desktop, mobile and tablet devices to an extent not found in many hotel websites. Also unlike most hospitality sites, FINE’s new site for Kimpton scrapped legacy content, sitemaps, and typical data and technology requirements in favor of freshly imagined content structure, thousands of carefully curated images, and ways of finding a place to stay. It allows users to navigate between, and compare Kimpton’s hotel portfolio in a myriad of ways - by city, amenities, restaurants, and descriptions. And it reflects Kimpton’s design and personality as never before.
“We are thrilled to help this iconic company create a bold digital presence worthy of its guests and its place in hospitality history,” says Josh Kelly, Managing Partner and Chief Strategist at FINE. “From the start, we were looking to create a web experience that would not just enable, but extend the unique guest experiences Kimpton offers. This site is not just a booking tool; it is as much a part of the complete product and service as the rooms and restaurants. It creates an environment that mimics what a guest might feel when checking into a Kimpton hotel. Above all else, we wanted the web experience to reflect the Kimpton spirit.”
Designed to more closely reflect Kimpton’s pioneering role in the creation of the boutique hotel concept in the United States, the new site is a rich, diverse, and deeply responsive experience. While typical hospitality sites employ perhaps seven repeating page design templates for their massive sites, FINE carefully designed and developed well over 40 unique page types for the Kimpton experience to create compelling and fluid touch points of the guest journey: from their first encounter with the new site, through their physical and digital experiences within a Kimpton hotel, to their reminiscences and departure of the experience.
This first version of the new web experience includes features that enable guests to search and view properties in unique ways, including the ability to compare meeting, event and wedding venues within the Kimpton collection, with bold plans for even more disruptive features in subsequent updates of the site. Behind the scenes, a new enterprise-level content management system keeps content fresh.
FINE is also working closely with Kimpton to craft and bring to digital life the “Kimpton Karma Rewards” loyalty program with brand and content strategies, design, development, testing, integration, and deployment, as well as consulting on the technical infrastructure and mapping the new program to the user experience.
“We selected FINE specifically to help us reimagine and enhance every touch point of our digital guest experience,” says Kathleen Reidenbach, senior vice president of marketing, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants. “From selecting and booking their stays to their thoughts about it afterwards, the guest journey is at the center. Ever since Bill Kimpton started this company in 1981, Kimpton’s been at the forefront of delivering unique, boutique hotel experiences – always personal, never ‘cookie-cutter’. It was great to work with FINE to apply the same “guest first” philosophy to our digital environment.”
