AROSA.

New horizons and new adventures.

A-ROSA are a specialist in European river cruises with well-established markets and a high level of brand recognition on the continent. Their specially designed ships are a familiar sight on most of the major rivers that snake their way through Europe and are the preferred staycation provider for individuals and families across the continent. Whether it’s the Rhine, the Seine or the Douro, their cruises take passengers into the heart of the city, mooring at premium positions allowing them to enjoy the very best of what each destination has to offer.

A-ROSA wanted to strengthen their position as a premier cruise provider with the creation of a UK specific website portal, that would provide the very best booking experience for their travel agent clients and provide a go to site that speaks directly to British customers who might be researching A-ROSA and its offerings.

All rivers flow to the sea.

When establishing a new site that is dedicated to the UK market, it has to be built from the ground up to ensure that the unique demands of the UK are identified and addressed. Benefitting from not only Inspiretec’s extensive experience of the travel industry, but their inherent knowledge of the UK travel consumer, A-ROSA were confident that the new platform would support their plans in the UK market.

By working closely with both the A-ROSA UK and German teams, the discovery phase was instrumental in identifying the key challenge of establishing exactly the right balance between the B2B clients and their B2C customers.

A key challenge for the design of the site was to be capable of presenting complex information that was as easy to understand as it was pleasing to the eye, whilst complimenting the ability to search and filter around different purchasing routes became essential allowing agents to:

• Search by River or by City, ensuring travel agents could respond quickly to their customers’ requests.
• Plan specific routes and identify opportunities for additional excursions or activities.
• Access ship specific information, allowing agents and their customers to truly familiarise themselves with their rooms and amenities.

We ensured that the layout was clean and simple to allow the content to be the focus of the page and allowed for potential passengers to:

• Find out about A-ROSA understanding their pedigree and proud history of river cruising.
• Access videos that provide a taste of what sights and experiences are possible.
• Read up on the huge range of excursions and trips that would complement their holiday.
• Answer any questions or provide reviews from other happy customers.

Building a platform for future growth.

Challenging expectations and creating innovative solutions is what Inspiretec thrive upon and this is reflected in our collaborative approach and agile working practices.

As part of the discovery phase for the project it is quickly understood that the site needed to offer powerful yet easy to use content management tools so the A-ROSA UK marketing team can curate the huge amount of product content efficiently. The Inspiretec development team identified that the Umbraco CMS would balance ease of use with the power to manage the massive amount of content needed to address user expectations.

The Inspiretec team implemented the popular opensource Umbraco CMS and added modules to handle specific A-ROSA requirements - form builder, site-wide search tools, embedded YouTube and panoramic 360 immersive video players. A modular architecture was used to allow A-ROSA content editors to assemble new pages that re-used components featured elsewhere on the site.

Inspiretec adopted a mobile first responsive design approach to deliver a consistent experience across mobile, tablet and desktop browsers.

Having a standalone site, dedicated to a UK based agents & customers also allowed the site to be structured and optimised specifically for this market, avoiding any conflict or mixed messages with the core European focused site. Even a specialist copywriter was engaged to create copy that was tailored to the UK market and provided the correct tone and references.

A website that focused on the journey as much as the beautiful destination.

Inspiretec created a high end yet practical website that reinforced the brand and brought the cruises to life with the use of rich copy, stunning images and engaging videos. The result was a website that A-ROSA could use to launch their UK market offering and genuinely speak directly to their customers they represented. This dedication to their customers and how they are engaged is yet another example of how A-ROSA always put their customers experience at the heart of what they do.