Somerwell

Guests love each of our hotels, but almost nobody knows they’re the same group. We pay a commission to the booking sites on stays that should have come to us direct, and our own site sells rooms like a spreadsheet.

Somerwell is a group of twelve independently run hotels in coastal and countryside towns. Each has its own character, and they share one owner. The buyer is the group’s CMO or commercial director.

People don’t choose a hotel. They choose a version of their weekend. What they remember, and what brings them back, is a specific hour: the first coffee on a cold terrace, the swim before breakfast, the fire after dinner. Room grids sell square metres. Hours sell the trip.

Book the hour, not the room. Every Somerwell house is introduced by its best hour of the day. The group stops being a list of locations and becomes a set of days you could have.

In the live concept

The concept is one page, the group home. Everything below is in it, and you can try it in the frame above.

• The Day Dial (#dial, #track, #panel). A scrubber from 05:00 to midnight under a code-drawn scene of one house, Wrenhaven. As you drag, the scene relights: the sun and moon move, the windows warm, the sea darkens, and the caption changes to what happens at that hour. The arrow keys step one hour at a time.
• “Find dates for this” (#findBtn, #dlg). It opens a sample availability calendar for two-night stays that include the chosen hour.
• The twelve houses (#houses, #grid12). Each house is introduced by one hour and one line, under the promise “Twelve houses. One way of keeping them.”
• Plan the weekend (#plan, #sketch). Pick Friday or Saturday arrival and a slow or full pace, and the page sketches three days in hours from Wrenhaven’s own hours. It is a sketch, not a booking.
• Rooms, drawn honestly (#rooms, #floor). One room, the Bay Room, as a floorplan drawn to scale with the bed, the window and the bath where they are. The light on the plan follows the hour on the dial. The member rate sits next to the public rate in plain words (sample data).
• Gift an hour (#gift). Choose one of three hours (by the fire, the swim before breakfast, supper off the boats) instead of a money amount.
• An empty proof slot, labelled “Customer proof, supplied by client”. We don’t write reviews for a concept.

Designed, not built in the concept

• We specified a page for each property: the hour first, then the house, then the rooms, with the Day Dial along the bottom of every one. The concept shows one house’s dial, on the group home.
• We specified a floorplan for every room. The concept draws one.
• We specified direct booking on top of the group’s existing booking engine, never more than two taps from any property page. The concept’s calendar and booking buttons are sample data and book nothing.
• We specified the gift checkout. The concept shows choosing the hour, not paying for it.

Try it in the frame above. Drag the dial from dawn to late night and watch Wrenhaven relight: the sun angle moves, the windows warm, the sea darkens, and the caption changes (the swim at 07:10, bread at 08:00, the walk at 16:00, supper at 19:30, the fire at 21:00). Stop on an hour and press Find dates for this to see stays that include it. With the keyboard, the arrow keys step one hour at a time.

With reduced motion on, four still buttons (Morning, Noon, Evening, Night) sit beside the caption and replace the continuous relight.

These are the concept’s colours, not Vivid’s.

Role	Name	Hex
Ground	Limewash	#EFE8DC
Primary text, deep panels	Tidewater	#1F4A44
Accent / CTA	Clay	#B5653F
Night state	Dusk	#2C3A57
Highlight, the lit window	Candle	#E8B85C
Rules, captions	Driftwood	#8C8273

Type: Fraunces for display, with italic for the hours, paired with Hanken Grotesk for body, UI and booking. Both are open-licence fonts, self-hosted in the concept.

Mood: slow, warm, specific.

A guest who lands on one property from a social post or a search should find out it belongs to a group of twelve. They should leave holding a specific hour they want, and find that booking direct is the easiest way to get it.

Figures inside the concept are sample data. Somerwell is a fictional brand.