VIP Ski

Stuff we do for VIP

• Integration with Comtec Travelink
• Hosted with AWS Cloud infrastructure
• Salesforce CRM integration
• Integrated product & content management
• Special offer & promotion management
• Segmentation & personalisation

• Custom Travelink reports & CRM integration
• Twitter integration
• Creative web design
• Booking flow optimisation
• Website infrastructure
• Agile software development

Zolv were able to come up with superbly elegant solutions to grisly problems

Gareth Crump, Sales Director, VIP

Challenge

Although a well-established business with a fantastic reputation for service excellence, VIP Ski had a limited website that provided users with only brief company information, a limited product overview and a telephone booking number, with no facility for online reservations.

The ethos of the company, summed up on the site by Managing Director, Andy Sturt, with words such as atmospheric and delectable, was not mirrored by the design or functionality of the existing website. The site was also at odds with VIP’s beautiful brochures, in that it lacked personality and was failing to display VIP’s luxurious product offering to its best advantage.

Gareth Crump, Sales Director of VIP said, "Our brand is extremely important to us and the existing website was not an accurate reflection of our brand values or the quality of our product. Having decided to maximise the use of our website as a main marketing tool and offer our customers the option of online booking, it was vitally important for us to have a visually appealing website with an effective, user-friendly booking system. We were aware that this would not be without its challenges and to begin to take bookings online was to mean a monumental change for our business."

This monumental change was to impact most strongly on VIP Ski’s small IT team, and throughout the project Zolv had to be mindful that the solution they created, and any content management tools put in place, had to have simplicity at the heart of its design and be manageable for the existing resource, as well as user friendly for customers.

In designing and building the new reservation interface, Zolv faced numerous challenges, not least those presented by the complexity of VIP Ski’s product offering which had always been packaged on-the-fly over the phone by sales executives with considerable product knowledge. The move to the web meant that all of this acquired knowledge had to be captured and turned into rules behind the online reservation system.

Crump continued, "From the outset we knew we would be faced with some serious challenges because of the intricacy of our data and the tailor made nature of our offering, but the Zolv team was extremely flexible. As with any project, it hasn’t always been plain sailing, but they have worked with us to overcome every single hurdle. There have been difficult times but somehow Zolv managed to lessen the impact."

The new site empowers our customers to interact with us

Gareth Crump, Sales Director, VIP

Solution

By using the of the latest version of it’s Web Travel Platform, a best-of-breed modular CMS and web publishing solution, Zolv were able to build the site on top of WTP’s cloud-optimised infrastructure, leaving more time within the project schedule to work the VIP personality into the site’s design, creating something that better suited the evocative and visual nature of the travel industry and most importantly, sold their products. The resulting website is, says Crump, "a perfect interpretation of our needs."

As part of the re-design, Zolv ensured that the high quality images of the chalets took centre stage, offering users a real feel for the atmosphere of different locations and allowing them to differentiate between the offerings of the various destinations. The Zolv Web Travel Platform has also allowed VIP to take greater control over its tone of voice, as the simple management tools allow tweaks to copy and images to be made quickly and easily.

VIP’s existing static and unchanging site has been replaced with a website that allows VIP to speak directly to its customers. There is now a place to profile the live-in staff who form such an important part of the VIP holidaymaker’s experience and social media has been incorporated into the build, with web cameras and twitter feeds allowing chalet managers to provide live updates on the snow conditions and to create a sense of excitement for visitors to the site.

Crucially, the new site supports VIP Ski’s targeted marketing strategy. The Zolv Web Travel Platform provides tools to define and assign a customer segmentation to each site visitor, and then select promotions, and product descriptions to best appeal to a given customer segment. For example, when a customer clicks through a promotion targeting "Adrenalin Junkies" , subsequent in-site promotions will be biased towards products for the adventurous skier, and chalet and resort pages will use content that is written specifically to appeal to "powder hounds"! The design allows for endless behavioural marketing possibilities and results, says Crump, in a site "which is built to genuinely satisfy our customers’ needs."

He continued, "We are delighted with the end result. It has sharpened our image. The new site empowers our customers to interact with us in their own way and satisfies their needs far better than our previous online offering."

The Web Travel Platform’s simple content management tools mean that the VIP team can create and publish promotional campaigns with ease. The new site empowers VIP staff by offering them an unprecedented level of control over their website with the ability to change or introduce new offers and content at the touch of a button. This keeps the site looking fresh, up-to-date and engaging.

Crump said, "Zolv took the time to understand our company’s personality, ethos and values and have created something that is a perfect reflection of it. They have combined great design with simple back office administration. "Throughout the project the Zolv team have been fantastic because of their willingness to listen, their total flexibility and, most importantly, their ability to come up with superbly elegant solutions to grisly problems." Looking ahead, Crump said, "In the long term I expect to see a huge increase in sales conversions but right now we are just delighted to have a website which accurately reflects a brand we are very proud of."