Challenge
Village Hotels is a rapidly expanding UK hotel group with 31 locations and a unique proposition, offering premium facilities at accessible prices. Despite multiple rebrands and ownership changes, the challenge remained consistent: how to keep Village ahead of the market, reduce reliance on intermediaries, and continually improve digital performance while supporting innovation at scale. This was not a one-time transformation, but an ongoing need for sustained competitive advantage.
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Solution
Over more than 15 years, Equator has served as a strategic partner, mentor, and delivery team, integrating platform engineering, experience design, performance marketing, and emerging technologies.
The focus has consistently been on ownership, innovation, and delivering measurable commercial return.
- Rebuilt the entire digital ecosystem, from front-end experience to reservation and rate management
- Delivered a headless Umbraco CMS architecture to power web, booking, in-room tech, and on-site screens
- Designed a high-converting booking engine extensible across multiple PMS platforms
- Introduced personalisation based on behaviour, traffic source, and contextual signals
- Partnered with Amazon engineers to launch the world’s first in-room Alexa concierge
- Replaced printed collateral with connected digital totem screens across all hotels
- Innovated affiliate models to reduce commission leakage
- Scaled PPC, SEO, and CRO programmes to drive sustained direct bookings
Results
Digital experience transformation delivered material commercial impact:
14% increase in funnel conversion
13% overall average conversion rate
34% year-on-year increase in bookings
29% year-on-year increase in revenue
2: 1 ROI within six months of platform relaunch
27% year-on-year ROI increase
43% increase in bookings driven by SEO
47% increase in SEO-generated revenue
17% increase in conversion rate
22% increase in organic traffic
Paid media performance improvements included:
12% increase in PPC booking
13% increase in PPC revenue
24% improvement in PPC conversion year on year
4% reduction in CPC
31% increase in PPC ROI
Outcome
Village Hotels now operates one of the most advanced and adaptable digital platforms in UK hospitality.
Ongoing innovation, strong platform ownership, and a relentless focus on conversion and ROI have helped Village scale profitably, reduce dependency on OTAs, and consistently outperform the market. The partnership shows how long-term, outcome-led digital transformation builds value year after year.