I watched a presentation given by the marketing heads for Marcus Hotels and Resorts as well as Morgans Hotel Group. Marcus Hotels and Resorts highlighted the Grand Geneva website and Morgans Hotel Group showcased the Sanderson Hotel in London’s website.

James Zito, VP of Interactive Marketing for Morgans Hotel Group discussed how they tried to develop a design that was unique to a boutique property. He stated “There is a unique reason why people stay at boutique property and we wanted to showcase that in our websites.” He called there websites an ‘immersive visual experience’ in trying to bring the property to life.

Some of the unique features regarding his websites includes the ability for the site to resize as you make your browser window smaller or larger. There is a lot of nightlife and social experience that goes on with the Morgans hotels and they wanted to share that using video and imagery. The calendar experience is almost full size and integrates with the blog that highlights experiences happening in the city where the hotel is located.

Both Marcus and Morgans Hotel Group used focus groups and extensive usability testing to determine the best direction to take in their design. Morgans Hotel Group spent over days watching focus groups use the new websites to see how they navigated through and made revisions that would accommodate any confusion the test user had.

Both companies also made sure their sites will built to be SEO friendly. Morgans has two copies of their website a flash and html version. The html version resides under the flash version – called progressively enhanced. The html version is used for both the search engines and for mobile phones.

What are your thoughts on both the Morgans Hotel websites and Marcus Hotels and Resorts websites? We would love to hear your comments.

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