Bürgenstock Resort // Waldhotel Website
Luxury Relaunch & Conversion Optimization
Excellence in Ambition and Execution
Nestled among lush meadows and green forests, the Waldhotel Health & Medical Excellence sits atop Bürgenberg in the heart of Switzerland—a peninsula surrounded by the crystal-clear waters of Lake Lucerne.
Designed by renowned Italian architect Matteo Thun, the sun-facing terrace building combines extraordinary architecture with state-of-the-art standards. Locally sourced stone, green roofs, gabions, and wooden pergolas integrate the building harmoniously into its natural surroundings.
Blending high-end Swiss hospitality with cutting-edge medical concepts, the Waldhotel is a place for healing and relaxation—uniting the benefits of a holistic medical facility with the comfort of a 5-star hotel. It offers regeneration and preventive care at the highest level across 137 rooms and suites, as well as an inviting spa. Services include beauty and wellness treatments, post-operative recovery, burnout therapy, and medical check-ups.
Excellence Online as Well
increase in Google visibility
Design Thinking & Rapid Prototyping
Sustainability that feels good—through modern architecture and stylish, cozy interiors, nature becomes a living experience. Refined design and natural materials create an atmosphere of comfort and elegance.
Spacious, light-filled rooms foster healthy living. Paired with innovative care, pioneering nutrition, a medical spa world, and authentic Swiss hospitality, they define a new standard in medical luxury hospitality.
The Waldhotel is a prime destination for yoga and wellness enthusiasts, offering tailored programs and holistic medical treatments based on proven therapies and the latest scientific insights.
To capture these qualities down to the finest detail, we brought all stakeholders together through Design Thinking workshops. Using Rapid Prototyping, we transformed early ideas into clickable mockups that visually conveyed the new direction.
Challenge & Project Objectives
The Challenge
As a newly established hotel, the Waldhotel lacked a coordinated digital marketing strategy. Initially reliant on word-of-mouth and OTAs (Online Travel Agencies), the interim website provided little support for brand representation, value communication, or direct bookings. Off-season occupancy posed a significant challenge.
It was time to:
- Build a comprehensive online strategy
- Create a website that reflects the hotel’s refined luxury
- Modernize digital marketing via SEO and Google Ads
Objectives
- Improve organic rankings and visibility
- Enhance cross-device experience
- Increase new user visits
- Reduce bounce rates
A major challenge was identifying relevant keywords with actual ranking potential in the competitive hotel and medical tourism space. Since the Google Medic Update, websites in the medical and wellness sectors have faced heavy fluctuations in visibility. Emphasizing medical authority (e.g., certified physicians) and product trust was essential for improving the site’s trustworthiness.
Like many others, the Waldhotel relied heavily on OTAs such as Booking.com, Expedia, and Agoda. While helpful, OTA bookings incur significant commission costs. A key goal: increase direct bookings to improve profitability and reduce third-party dependency.
Together with the Waldhotel team, sitegeist created a structured, responsive, and optimized website that meets modern search and usability standards—alongside an integrated online marketing strategy to boost ROI.
Strategy, Concept & Development
Based on in-depth research and consulting, we developed a digital strategy to position the Waldhotel distinctively—highlighting its uniqueness and targeting a new, exclusive audience.
A comprehensive Lean Inception Workshop on-site helped define:
- Key target markets
- Primary website goals
- Historical digital performance
- Design and functional requirements
- Differentiators from competing luxury hotels
Within a tight timeline, we used Design Thinking and Rapid Prototyping to build a unique online corporate identity that would stand out in the luxury hospitality sector.
Together with the Waldhotel marketing team, we developed a mobile-first, user-centric website with a sharp focus on usability and a solid digital marketing foundation. Inspired by the hotel’s natural, curated interiors, our design team created a clear, calm layout that reflects understated luxury.
The mobile-optimized layout improved user flow across the customer journey. The visual identity combines elegant color palettes, generous whitespace, and a typographic mix of classic serif and modern grotesque to create a contemporary, multi-dimensional aesthetic.
SEO Strategy
Our top priority: design a website built for SEO success from the ground up.
To compete in the wellness hotel market, we:
- Defined key audiences and created dedicated landing pages
- Optimized content, heading structures, performance, meta titles/descriptions, internal linking, and backlinks
We created detailed buyer personas to support content development, resolving customer needs at every journey stage. Data-driven keyword research informed content architecture and supported lead-generating, expertise-rich storytelling.
Another key aspect was search engine marketing (SEM) using Google Ads. Carefully crafted, international ad campaigns targeted branded and long-tail keywords—positioning the Waldhotel’s website above OTA ads in the results.
Mobile First
Building a newly defined brand in the medical tourism sector required a sensitive design approach. Our goal: a clear, consistent visual language that ensures brand recognition and focuses on essentials.
Perfect environment for inspiring workshops
The Result
After launch, the new website led to significantly more direct bookings and calls than in previous years. Within just a few months, key performance indicators improved across the board. Organic clicks rose by over 700%, driven by increased visibility in search engines.
Ongoing site optimization and keyword monitoring enabled the hotel to build solid Google rankings in a fiercely competitive market—driving qualified traffic.
Other measurable outcomes:
- Increased revenue
- Longer average session duration
- Higher number of sessions
- Bounce rate decreased below 30%
Thanks to on-page SEO, meta tag optimization, and smart internal linking, the hotel’s search visibility skyrocketed.
