The Cottage Collection is a company that operates a portfolio of high quality self-catering properties throughout the UK available for holiday rental.
Affinity New Media, web design and database development specialists in Norwich were appointed to design and develop the Company’s internet presence with a dynamic data driven website capable of taking bookings online and one which was fully integrated with a third party supplied back-office bookings system
residing at the Company’s UK based Call Centre.
The aim was simple - to develop a website that met the demands of The Cottage Collection, individual cottage owners and the general public who would ultimately use the site to locate quality holiday properties.
The resulting site is unique in the market sector in that it integrates real-time availability by being linked directly into the Cottage Collection’s own booking software. The site is able to take bookings online and to automatically update a
given property’s availability based on any bookings taken.
Other site resources built in include the ability to send oneself (or a group of friends) emailed mailshots of chosen properties, downloadable PDF property details and printable database entries - all aimed at providing a user with increased and accessible property information.
With a fully customisable search facility, the website offers detailed information on over 500 holiday cottages, including internal and external photography, dynamic pricing information and links to external websites. All elements in the powerful
database fed website are administered via Affinity’s own ’Media Assistant’ - a comprehensive back-end content management tool, designed to deliver complete administration powers to end-users without any knowledge of complex SQL or ASP coding.
In the Cottage Collection’s case, the end-users are the
cottage owners who can update their own cottage details via password and username protected interfaces.
Affinity’s sister company, Affinity i-Marketing, are responsible for all online marketing activities which include ongoing search engine site optimisation, management of a significant Pay-per-Click budget and the administration of gateway sites and affiliate-feed
programmes.
