A small harbour hotel, and a website with nothing to sell.

Nobody chooses Polcarrow for the thread count. They choose it for the harbour, so the website tells you the tide before it tells you the price.

The brief

Tamsin and Will Hocking bought Polcarrow in 2017: fourteen rooms in a row of nineteenth-century net lofts on a working harbour on the south Cornish coast. They restored the building slowly and well. The website still belonged to the previous owners, with a stock template, a pop-up offer and a booking engine that opened in a new tab.

Fewer than a third of rooms were booked direct. The rest came through two travel agencies, and the front desk spent most mornings answering the same five questions by phone: tide times, parking, dogs, late arrival and breakfast.

The idea

We took out everything that tried to sell. No offers, no countdowns, no “only two rooms left”. Every page opens on what the harbour is doing that day: the next high and low water and the time of sunset.

The wordmark is a Cormorant italic, loosened at the joins like the signwriting on the old harbour master’s board. Slate blue for the water, lime white for the walls and one lichen yellow, taken from the harbour wall itself.

What we made

Identity and signage
Website, designed and built
Booking flow inside the site
Live tide and sunset panel
Room photography direction
Tide card and stationery

A woman in a wool jumper sitting on a harbour wall at low tide, boats resting on the sand — Low water, early October.

The harbour comes first

The tide panel answers the question guests used to phone about most, and it says what kind of place this is without a single adjective. It took a day to build.

A brass room key, a folded tide card, letterpress notepaper and a laptop showing the Polcarrow website on a weathered blue table — Key, tide card, letterhead and the booking page, which now sits inside the site rather than in a new tab.

How the mark moves

The italic settles like a boat on a falling tide: a slow lean, then still. It runs once on the homepage and never again in the visit.

An enamel sign reading Polcarrow in slate blue italic on a lime-washed stone wall with lichen — Vitreous enamel, slate blue on white, beside the harbour door.

What changed

direct bookings in the 2021 season
Against 2019. Every Cornish hotel had a busy year, so the share below is the figure we trust.
of rooms booked direct, up from 31%
The two agencies now sell the winter months only.
phone calls before arrival
Tide, parking, dogs, arrival and breakfast are answered on the page you book from.

Who made it

Orvel

Anjali RaoCreative directionLondon
Tomás FerreiraDesign and websiteLisbon
Freya LundStrategy and contentLondon

With

Client team: Tamsin Hocking, Will Hocking
Photography: Kit Rowe
Booking integration: Orvel engineering
Enamel signs: Lowen Signs, Truro

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