I debated including this story since Castle Resorts is a Sassato client (Sassato is also the company behind HHH), and we helped with strategy and content for its website rebuild. But Hospitality Technology and others have covered it, and I think the story is worth sharing because it challenges some long-held assumptions about how hotel websites get built. I’ll try to keep the self-congratulation to a minimum. 😉
Anyone who’s been through a hotel website rebuild knows the drill: big budgets, year-long timelines, and enough meetings to make you question your career choices. Castle launched a new site for 20 properties across five booking engines in under four months for low five figures. Early results show revenue per session up 41%. See for yourself at CastleResorts.com.
Patrick Ahler, Castle’s SVP of Growth, led a small team: Sassato (strategy and content), Negi Studio (design and front end), and Zenshin Group (development and integrations). AI was used throughout, with technology selected so AI agents could work directly with it, and Castle owns its code outright.
I’ll admit I was skeptical we could pull it off. But the key was the mindset: be flexible, be ready to adjust, and focus on launching something substantially better rather than disappearing into a bunker for a year chasing perfection. Speed turned out to be a real advantage. A better site launched in months starts delivering results sooner, and the benefits of ongoing optimization compound over time.
AI made development incredibly fast, but content, coordination, and human decisions still took time (pesky humans!). Having survived more hotel tech projects than I care to remember, that doesn’t surprise me. 😉
The bigger takeaway? Maybe it’s time to rethink what a hotel website project should cost, how long it should take, and how much of the traditional process is actually necessary.
