Case study
Residence Celeste
Lakeside serviced apartments, long stays and guests from four countries · Lake Como
Apartments for long stays in an international destination: a site in four languages, campaigns, SEO and a blog built around a different audience from hotels.
Where things stood
- On Lake Como the audience is international by definition: German, British and French guests before Italian ones.
- On the booking sites a serviced apartment ends up compared with hotels, a comparison it starts out losing: someone looking for a week in an apartment wants different things from someone looking for two nights.
- The details that actually decide a long stay, kitchen, space, laundry, parking, were not the ones being highlighted.
What was done
- The website rebuilt around the long stay rather than the single night, with the practical details up front.
- Four languages, Italian, English, German and French, with correct hreflang, so each market finds its own version straight from search.
- SEO looked after over time, built around how people search for an apartment on the lake, which is not how they search for a hotel.
- A blog kept up to date, in the languages of the site: people spending a week on the lake look first for things to do there, and those searches come long before the booking.
- Google campaigns targeted by language and by market, instead of a single campaign translated.
The result
- The property no longer reads as “a cheaper hotel”, but as what it actually offers someone staying a week.
- Each of the four markets has the site in its own language, indexed as a version in its own right rather than a secondary translation.
- The campaigns speak to each market in its own language, instead of treating them as a single audience.
- The property has a direct channel of its own, instead of depending on being compared on the booking sites.