Rwts: Building Digital Infrastructure for Coastal Hospitality

Overview

When a restaurant and rooms operation sits twenty meters from the Welsh coast, the view sells itself, but getting people to find you online takes a different kind of work.

RWTS had built a strong reputation through word of mouth and return visitors drawn to Broad Haven's coastline, and their food philosophy, nourishing, adventure focused and locally sourced, resonated with surfers, families and conscious travellers. The problem was that none of it was showing up online. Search engines didn't really understand what they offered, the analytics were a mess, and there was no reliable way to tell which marketing actually brought in bookings. We came on as their technical partner to build the foundations underneath all of it.

The Challenge

Hospitality is a tricky one online, because a restaurant needs to show up in local search, rooms need to be bookable, and both need to be understood by search engines in the first place. Their Shopify site worked well enough, but it wasn't built to be found. As a new business they had no local search presence to speak of, which is a real problem when most of your customers are people planning a Pembrokeshire trip from a couple of hundred miles away.

Analytics were in a similar state. Google Analytics was installed but nothing was tracked properly, so bookings couldn't be traced back to social, ads or search, and marketing decisions came down to guesswork. On top of that the day to day IT, email, accounts and domains, was quietly eating time that should have gone into running the business.

What We Did

We worked across three streams.

On search, we rebuilt how the site presents itself to Google so that rooms, menus, events and blog posts are all understood for what they actually are. That went alongside proper page structure, meta descriptions, image optimisation, a sitemap that puts the important pages first, and getting their local listings in order.

On analytics, we started again from scratch with Google Tag Manager and GA4, tracking the things that matter like room views, booking clicks and newsletter signups, and connecting the site to the external booking platforms so the whole journey stays visible. Ad tracking for Google and Meta went in at the same time, so spend can be measured properly.

On IT, we took over Google Workspace, email routing, user accounts, domains and security, the unglamorous stuff that only gets noticed when it breaks.

The Results

Search engines now understand what RWTS offers, so rooms turn up in accommodation searches, food shows up in local restaurant queries and events surface when people are looking for things to do in Pembrokeshire.

They can also see what's working. They know which posts about coastal walks and surf conditions bring booking traffic, and that Instagram builds awareness while search converts. Decisions come from data now rather than instinct.

The IT side just runs. Email works, staff get set up quickly, and nothing needs firefighting.

Because it's an ongoing partnership rather than a one off build, new menus, events and offerings get the SEO and tracking treatment from day one. They focus on hospitality, we handle the technical side that makes it findable.

Takeaways

• Being properly understood by search engines is foundational for a local business, not a nice to have
• Analytics tools don't help until they're set up to answer real business questions
• Hospitality needs continuous optimisation, not just a launch