Cennet Travel has been operating online for over 15 years, offering holidays, tours and short breaks to locations all over the globe.

Travel 55 is one of many holiday directory websites owned by Cennet. They offer customers the chance to find a holiday from some of the top travel providers in the UK at a discount. The project involved a complete visual overhaul, using large scale photography and a clean modern design aligned to the Cennet umbrella brand. CMS selection was important and a custom built data importer was developed as part of the tool set. This allows the Cennet team to upload thousands of holidays per season with ease - a great improvement on their old working process.

The design was totally reconceptualised with a focus on a clean modern design aligned to the Cennet umbrella brand. The trick was to create a template flexible enough to be customised, maintaining a few key consistent elements so that it still felt like a member of the brand family..

The colours for the website were taken from the same palette as those used for the Cennet logo, which originate from the blue elements of the paradise flower. This blue and teal scheme invokes holiday ideals of blue skies and calm seas, complimenting the images used throughout the website, many of which show one or both of these.

The large-scale photography was an important new feature. The photographs were chosen for their recognisability in connection with specific locations, and their intense colour saturation. With these two features, the images have a wonderful quality of light and a sense of depth, drawing the viewer in to whichever destination they happen to depict.

These images were crucial to the creation of the layout. Now, instead of scrolling through text lists with added images, the viewer is presented primarily with a grid of bright, attractive, welcoming images set out on the page, each with a line or two of textual description.

Our Content Management System of choice was perfectly suited to this project. Integrating well with a custom-built data importer as part of its tool set; the Cennet team can upload thousands of holidays per season with ease - a great improvement on their old manual system. The new system also incorporates integrated XML feeds; content is now pulled straight from the operators’ databases into the Travel 55 site as new deals and packages become available.

The CMS was tailored to include four modules to help with managing the site; Content, Holidays, Operators, Brochures. The last of these was important; previously, all brochure requests had been handled manually via individual emails to Travel 55, who would forward requests on to the relevant operators, again via email.

Now the requests are sent straight to the operators straight from the CMS system; each request is logged automatically and stored in the Travel 55 system, and no manual input is now required from Travel 55 for this process. The other three modules were greatly beneficial in helping to streamline the work in terms of content, which needs to be updated on a regular basis. We also incorporated a draft system into the site, allowing those managing the content to preview updated pages before publication.

Services : Branding, Business card & stationery design, Directory Website, Dedicated Server & Technical Support, Bespoke Content Management System, Email-Marketing, Pay Per Click, SEO