Case study · Boutique hotel pre-opening site
The Vere Rose a Marylebone hotel you can turn the clock on.
A pre-opening site for a 42-room Marylebone hotel, with a draggable time-of-day dial, rooms, three venues and founding-guest booking.
This is the real website. Scroll it, tap it, try it. On a phone it’s best full screen.
- Type
- Boutique hotel pre-opening site
- Sector
- Hospitality
- Sections
- 8
- Built with
- Hand-coded · no templates
About the site
The Vere Rose is a 42-room townhouse hotel on Vere Street, London W1 — three minutes from Bond Street — with its own coffee roastery, the Rose Room restaurant and Ironwork bar. The site launches it ahead of opening and invites people to become founding guests.
The idea
Before a hotel opens you can’t show reviews or real guests, so the site sells a feeling instead: the lamps always on, the door open at all hours. The centrepiece is “Turn the clock” — drag the hand around a dial and the 1890 facade changes with the hour, from morning coffee to last orders.
What we built, section by section
- 01
A new hotel on Vere Street
“Three minutes from Bond Street, a world from Oxford Street.”
- 02
The house
The story, with the numbers: 42 rooms, an 1890 facade, a 24-hour concierge.
- 03
Four ways to stay
Room types with sizes, starting prices and pictures.
- 04
Turn the clock
The interactive dial that relights the facade hour by hour.
- 05
Eat & drink
The Roastery, the Rose Room and Ironwork, with opening times.
- 06
On the doorstep
Nearby landmarks with walking times and a simple street plan.
- 07
Be a founding guest
Three early-booking perks, with no payment taken.
- 08
Reservation request
Dates, guests, nights and room, with a confirmation state.
From the build
Films and pictures from inside the The Vere Rose website. Swipe through.
Features
- Draggable time-of-day dial (and slider) changing the facade
- Custom multi-month date picker
- Guest and night steppers with room choice
- Scrolling ticker of brand phrases
- Newsletter sign-up for opening news
- Map, phone and email links
Look and feel
Warm near-black with rose, brass, marble and dark oak — evening lamplight on stone. The copy is understated and quietly witty (“the one you’d tell a friend about quietly”), with single italic words in the large headings.
Under the bonnet
- Hand-coded dial, calendar and forms — no framework
- WebP imagery served from a CDN
- Full sharing meta and canonical URL
- Viewport-fit and Apple web-app tags for phones
- Skip link and alt text throughout
Like everything I build, it’s made from scratch. No page builder, no theme. So it’s quick, it works on phones first, and it’s easy to change later.
