Folly Beach Holiday Inn

At the Folly Beach Holiday Inn, “having it all” really means having it all. Just outside Charleston, the hotel was well known by frequent visitors to the island. But after the major renovation refreshed their look and added the restaurant, Blu, the hotel needed a revamped website to promote its improved look and attract a wider base of guests. At {e} house, we work hard but we also know a little something about relaxing well. The Folly Beach Holiday Inn is our kind of place.

One of the hotel’s main struggles was connecting with all its various target markets: weddings, business meetings, reunions and individual travelers looking for everything from a week on the beach to a weekend of water sports and dining. In order to connect with all these markets, we designed a site architecture that allows each visitor to quickly find the information he or she wants most. With specific navigation tabs for weddings, catered events, dining, etc., plus a homepage callout for Blu, the site has a broad-based appeal all within the hotel’s laid-back brand image.

As a full-service hotel with regularly changing schedules and events, the Folly Beach Holiday Inn needed the ability to quickly and easily update their website themselves. Thus, we designed the website with a specialized content management system that allows for both the hotel’s and the restaurant’s website pages to be changed by hotel staff. Additionally, the site is 508 compliant and includes tracking mechanisms that allow the hotel to follow click-throughs to the corporate booking site and record the number of wedding planning PDF downloads.

Through email blasts, direct mailings and search-engine optimization, we spread the news about the newly renovated Folly Beach Holiday Inn and its new website. The site immediately experienced a high level of traffic with as many as 750 unique visits per day. Overall, the hotel has increased visits to its website by as much as 550 visits per day and has decreased its bounce rate from 50% down to 36% in just four months. Additionally, since the launch of the new site, 86% of the visitors have been new visitors (20% over the industry average) and 18% of those have go on to use the booking agent. Without a doubt, both the Folly Beach Holiday Inn and its restaurant, Blu, have benefitted greatly from their new look and new website.