Who
A hotel chain operating 20+ hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
The problem
Improve online presence, unlock online bookings, and meet the Saudi requirements for a hotel chain's online presence. The client's own proposed solution was a new booking platform, modelled on platforms competitors in the market had built.
What we did
Sahla studied the client's competencies, capabilities and realistic openings before designing anything, and concluded the platform was not feasible for them yet — money spent on infrastructure nobody in the business was positioned to use.
The recommendation was minimal upgrades to the WordPress site they already had: bookings, landing pages, contact forms and offers. Cheaper, reversible, and enough to test whether online demand actually exists before committing to infrastructure that assumes it.
Sahla does not offer WordPress services and did not pretend to. A professional was recommended, and Sahla stayed on to audit the work against the client's requirements, then advised on paid social and SEO, using analytics to direct it.
What changed
The online presence they needed for under 10,000 SAR, against 50,000+ SAR for the first year of the platform they originally asked for — and 200 confirmed bookings through the website in the first two weeks after the traffic work.
What we would say plainly
Expensive software is not always the answer, and the honest recommendation is sometimes to spend less, with someone else.