Clermont Hotel Group (CHG) launched Obvlo's local guides on thistle.com, working alongside its digital agency Punch. Discovery and engagement improved quickly, and CHG is now extending the approach across its wider portfolio and international markets.
01 | The challenge
Thistle's London hotels compete in one of the most crowded hotel markets in the world. Travellers decide which neighbourhoods, restaurants and experiences matter to them before they compare hotels, and more of that research now happens inside AI answers. Last summer, 55% of Americans used an AI app such as ChatGPT to plan a holiday, up from 38% the year before (McKinsey, reported in The Economist).
Thistle already publishes its own blog. Reaching travellers earlier, at the research stage, called for destination content at a far greater scale, across several hotels and international markets. Producing that volume would have added significant cost for CHG and taken its agency's time away from strategy and brand development.
The question for CHG was whether their Thistle hotels could show up earlier in the planning journey, via Google and in AI answers, without adding to the workload of its own team or their agency.
02 | What Obvlo changed
Content at this volume has two parts. One is production, which means writing, localising, structuring, hosting and keeping hundreds of pages up to date. The other is judgement, which means knowing the brand, the guests, the markets and where the website needs to take people. At Thistle each part went to the team best placed to do it.
Obvlo took on the production. The platform handles content strategy, writing in Thistle's brand voice, localisation, hosting and ongoing optimisation. Every guide is structured to rank in Google and to be cited in AI answers such as Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
Punch brought the judgement. Punch connected the guides to thistle.com so they sit within Thistle's own site, and brought its understanding of CHG's brands, guests and markets. With production handled by the platform, Punch's time remained focused on strategy, the brand and the journey to booking.
CHG set the direction. The priorities were growing direct bookings and international demand.
The guides answer the questions travellers ask about the neighbourhoods, restaurants and experiences around each hotel while they are still deciding where to stay. Because they live on thistle.com, every visit and ranking builds Thistle's own authority and points guests towards booking direct.
For agencies, Thistle shows how Obvlo works in practice. It sits alongside the agency's existing work and produces measurable results quickly, with the platform carrying the production load.
03 | The evidence
Ranking within weeks, not months. Within weeks the guides were bringing around 8% of all Google clicks to thistle.com, from a section that effectively started at zero.
More clicks from fewer pages. The guides have around half as many pages as Thistle's existing blog, yet are three times as likely to be clicked when they appear in search.
More visibility where research now starts. The guides' appearances in Google's AI answers have grown 59% since the first week.
No new workload. CHG's team did not have to write, translate or maintain a single page.
What a single page can do
One guide for “date ideas” in London has earned, since launch:
- Close to 3% of all Google clicks to thistle.com
- Around 2% of the whole site's search impressions
- About 1.4% of Thistle's appearances in Google's AI answers
- A click-through rate of around 2.5%
04 | What it meant for CHG
The guides sit on thistle.com, so the visibility and visits they earn build CHG's own website rather than a third party's, and send guests towards booking direct. CHG says the guides are helping drive its organic growth.
These results cover the first part of the value chain, which is visibility, discovery and engagement. Booking revenue is the next layer, and it will be reported alongside search and AI performance as the rollout reaches CHG's other brands.
05 | What happened next
Obvlo is now rolling out to CHG's other brands, including The Clermont, The Cumberland and The Royal Horseguards, and adding Italian, Spanish, French and Arabic across every brand. That will take the guides from 211 pages to almost 2,000 pages. The rollout goes live this December. Punch is guiding which international markets to prioritise, with Obvlo delivering content across every brand and language.
Having started with Thistle, CHG is now extending Obvlo across the group, building on the results of the first few weeks.
06 | In their own words
“Increasing direct bookings and broadening international demand are central to our commercial strategy, and both of these start with guests being able to find us on our own website. Within weeks we were appearing far more often in Google's AI answers and bringing new visitors to thistle.com, without asking anything more of our team. It made a natural and logical step for us to extend this to our other brands and translate this into new languages.”
Stuart Yeates, Chief Commercial Officer, Clermont Hotel Group
“The value of an agency is in its expertise, knowing the brand, the guests and the markets. Producing content at this scale would have taken our time away from that. With Obvlo handling production, we can focus on the judgement our clients rely on us for, and for the rollout that means deciding which markets matter most for CHG.”
Jack Eustace, Head of Digital, Punch
“CHG wanted to grow direct bookings without adding to its team's workload. Punch brought the knowledge of the brand and its markets, and our platform combined that with scale and efficiency. We're looking forward to taking that model across the rest of the group to drive search and AI visibility, and with it direct bookings.”
Stuart Cooper, Chief Operating Officer, Obvlo