Whilst staying in London collecting two prestigious awards for our marketing campaigns for Countryside Properties’ Mann Island at the Google sponsored UK Property Awards, we had a chance meeting with our hotel’s General Manager Giuseppe Paolelli.

It turned out the hotel was looking to update their online presence and in fact had already unofficially chosen the successful agency. One hour later and Giuseppe was so impressed by what we told him about our experience and expertise, he gave us three days to prove to him what we could do for his hotel.

The Leonard is a luxurious boutique hotel excellently located in Hyde Park. From the extraordinarily spacious Grand Suites to the individually decorated bedrooms, the hotel provides a warm, intimate and luxurious atmosphere from which to discover all that London has to offer. The wide variety of suites can accommodate family hotel rooms' requests and currently boasts 90% occupancy. But that’s not good enough for us.

Although initially, Giuseppe and the hotel owner had only briefed a website update, we felt that the starting point should be a review of the brand itself. Three long days later and we submitted our proposal for a brand refresh, including examples of hotel collateral and exterior signage.

Our website proposal illustrated how refined navigation, content and overall site structure - combined with our new brand - would provide visitors with a much more engaging site experience. Our suggestions for much richer and relevant content, combined with a much improved approach to the site’s SEO, demonstrated the potential to greatly improve the number of visitors to the site through natural search. No mean feat in a market as competitive as hotel’s in London.

We encouraged links with businesses in the local community to help paint the picture of a what is a bustling and exciting neighbourhood, again also improving our rankings in search engines, but just as importantly illustrating what is on offer in the immediate neighbourhood for those looking for an exciting London break.

A meeting to present our concepts to Paul and Giuseppe followed and the rest, as they say, is history.

We have already started to implement the new brand and the website will go live in the new year. Watch this space for more information.