
This site cost $18m to make - instakill
http://www.preview.fourseasons.com/
======
casca
If you've never been involved in the building of a website for a large company
then this might come as a surprise. Getting agreement for so many things would
have taken many people months of time. "Lean Startup" where things don't work
on day 1 is not an option. Include focus groups, armies of usability testing,
all sorts of integration misery and this doesn't seem a crazy big number. They
don't get 4 developers who'll work for 2 years for 12 hours a day for no
money.

~~~
mtrimpe
From what I can tell it looks like a fairly decent deal.

The site is snappy, visually impressive and with a well thought out user
experience, tasteful upsell and in general clear communication.

At least it launched and managed to avoid all the pitfalls of corporate
politics leading to bad architectural choices leading to a very expensive
_and_ poor implementation, which is a much more difficult challenge by itself
than most people realize.

It's important to remember that:

* very few great developers/designers will work for Four Seasons on the cheap.

* it'll mostly have been well paid consultants earning $100/hr and up

* it is very likely that the project has had multiple iterations to reach it's current state, all hidden behind a single big release.

~~~
DrinkWater
Try deactivating JavaScript and look at the page. For $18M i would expect
something else.

~~~
Void_
Try W3C validation! How dare they cash $18M and not even produce _valid
HTML_..

Seriously now, what is it, 1999?

~~~
DrinkWater
There are people who deactivate JS, for personal/corporate/whatever reasons.
Shouldn't one serve these customers as well? Or does this feature cost another
$1.5M ?

~~~
mfringel
Granted, there are people who deactivate JS for whatever reason.

The intersection of "people who deactivate JS" and "The addressable market of
Four Seasons Hotels" is likely small enough that the lost potential sales
wouldn't even cover the cost of development.

~~~
ricardobeat
Except that the cost is near zero if you approach it right. It also means
supporting many mobile browsers that usually break js and providing a better
experience on slower connections (3g, edge, whatever).

~~~
jonknee
There's a specific touch optimized site that works for mobile. It doesn't look
like it or the iPad optimized site are done yet either since they redirect to
preview.fourseasons.com, but they're definitely aware of mobile devices.

------
instakill
Here's the story: [http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8676-four-seasons-
unveils-18...](http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8676-four-seasons-
unveils-18m-website)

~~~
iaskwhy
Kinda off-topic, from the article: "The 2012 Four Seasons Luxury Trends Report
from Four Seasons reveals that 71% of its customers bring a smartphone with
them on their travels and 61% bring a tablet device."

That's a lot. And even so, my only two experiences at luxury hotels meant no
wifi available in the room. And daily paid ethernet. I understand being there
meant me or my company have money but I'd like to stop being ripped off after
paying so much to stay there.

~~~
mrfairladyz
On a related note to the off-topic point, visiting the website from a mobile
device yields a surprisingly good mobile interface.

------
marknutter
The best way to kick the hornets' nest over at HN is to mention lots of money
exchanging hands (i.e. color.com). Nothing brings out the self-righteous geek
in us than hearing about other developers getting paid.

~~~
zedshaw
Right. Developers getting paid. You hear that sound? Listen real carefully.
It's the sound of our profession being flushed down a toilet because your
buddies are cheating businesses out of their money by charging too much for
too little.

~~~
eykanal
Do you hear that sound? It's the sound of your buddies charging appropriately
for their skills while you consistently undercharge.

~~~
DanBC
So a competent version of this site would cost how much?

~~~
mustardhamsters
What makes you think this site isn't done well?

~~~
DanBC
> _A modern hotel situated in a dynamic, historic conjures up all that’s best
> about London’s past, present and future._

$18mill should buy some pretty damn good proof readers, no?

------
DrinkWater
Lets assume they received a custom CMS with the website, some custom frontend-
plugins, development of flash entities, interfaces to in-house IT-systems, a
tracking suite, hosting, QA, send some photographers around the world to get
high quality pictures, consulting....Still i cant figure out HOW this can cost
$18M (and i am a technical consultant in digital agency, working exclusively
for enterprise customers).

~~~
tacheshun
They didn't receive a custom CMS. Actually, they used Adobe CQ5 for this.

------
spydum
Judging by the URL structure, this is built on Adobe (formerly Day)'s
Communique 5.x platform.

The CQ Platform gives you a ton of these graphical widgets and social
interaction out of the box, though there is still plenty of development to
write a full reservation system. It also handle mobile rendering, site
templating, and multiple languages quite well.

So while it sounds like people are seeing "a single website for $18m", I'd be
willing to wager that was the cost for the entire content platform
(CMS/Social/Mailings/Reservation system. So now they would have access to very
advanced templating design, multi-lingual components.

The amount of time it would take them to roll out multiple country and
language sites would be dwarfed in comparison to any other platform. That $18m
may be a big upfront costs, but might well pay for itself if they intend to
use for other properties and across multiple regions/languages.

~~~
notjustanymike
Definitely CQ - pretty impressive in that regard. Having worked with the
platform, I can tell you -good- CQ5 developers are very expensive and hard to
acquire. Conde Nast is learning this the hard way after they committed to
converting all their properties over to CQ.

~~~
spydum
True enough, but with a total cost of $18m, I'd guess they went full
consultancy -- not done in house.

Completely unrelated, does MJK mean anything to you?

------
rattler
$18 Mil and blurry images -
[http://cdn.fourseasons.com/content/dam/fourseasons/images/we...](http://cdn.fourseasons.com/content/dam/fourseasons/images/web/CAW/CAW_068_aspect16x9.jpg/jcr:content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.720.jpeg)

------
beambot
If the website redesign results in 1% more direct conversions on their website
(versus discount "Hotels.com" outfits), then $18M is probably a fairly decent
"investment".

Perhaps the developers were smart and made a _value proposition_ rather than a
pure hourly / salary proposition. Others on HN have talked about this
distinction extensively, so try to avoid that little mental roadblock when
considering the amount that they paid for the redesign.

------
mgcross
I wonder if photography was rolled into that cost? I'm sure some shots are
reused and rights-managed stock, but for those that aren't, the costs of
planning, lighting, rigging, stylists, talent, etc. would be significant. And
it looks as though each location has 30+ photographs:
<http://www.preview.fourseasons.com/find_a_hotel_or_resort/>

------
tucaz
I'm surprised that no one yet said anything about the 18M being a fake number.
These guys do this all the time. They spend 10M and release to the press that
it was 20M.

I work(ed) for more than one company that uses this strategy. The whole idea
is to get everyone to think that you are bigger than you really are.

Of course one can spend 18M on a bad project, but you guys covered it
already...

~~~
dotjosh
This is exactly it. Not to mention all of the "internal" resources/time they
put into that number. I also imagine they did an overhaul of their internal
booking system, and possibly increased full-time staff (project managers,
support, and sales staff) to handle the new demand.

------
ricardobeat
So? It's a pack of ~90 sites + the main one, content management systems that
will probably be used by hundreds, photography.. the cost is not surprising at
all.

They _could_ do a better job of graceful degradation for javascript disabled
without much effort, but I wouldn't blame them - everyone here seems to
support the opposing mindset too.

------
josefresco
It's weird, some elements of the design look to be 5-6 years old in style,
while other are clearly inspired by Microsoft's Metro UI (which is good).

The small font size and traditional 'luxury hotel' look of the header/footer
really ruin it for me (example look how the tagline in the tiny logo is almost
unreadable). Where they succeed (mostly) is in the page content layout and
design.

Also, shrinking my browser window doesn't dynamically resize or shift the
layout so -1 for unresponsiveness. I was on a sub page of the Boston location
which may not have that flexibility but for 18M and 2012 ... it should.

~~~
thomasgerbe
"Also, shrinking my browser window doesn't dynamically resize or shift the
layout so -1 for unresponsiveness. I was on a sub page of the Boston location
which may not have that flexibility but for 18M and 2012 ... it should."

Responsive design also limits design/ux decisions especially on their content
pages which have a non-linear grid system and shouldn't be universal. I'm not
for or against responsive web design but I think it should be contextual. I
haven't seen many sites that have won me over.

------
thevictor
Well that trumps this website <http://www.bankwest.com.au/> which cost $5
million to make.

~~~
meric
Did that come with the online banking site, or is $5M just for that one page?

~~~
pan69
Online Banking is usually done internally by banks. The front facing consumer
sites are usually done by an agency.

I know that Host was doing work for Bank West. Anyone knows if they also did
this as well or are they just above the line for this client?

------
pragmatic
Is it just me or is the text at the bottom of each picture (with the location,
temp, etc) unreadable in at least half the locations? The white on white is a
bad idea.

This must be a "marketing" driven site where "good ideas" trump usability. I'm
sure they got an award or three for this cutting edge design.

------
Lucadg
I've been working on an online reservation CMS for more than 2 years now and
this seems quite a good result. Maybe I would have done some things
differently, such as location selection: the drop down is really long, the
could have used an autosuggest. But everybody likes different things so I can
only assume their usability tests suggested otherwise.

The price is not really something we can judge: it could be either fair or too
much. Who knows, this may be a very flexible framework they'll use for the
next X years (good) or a hard to maintain website which will cost them even
more to keep alive.

We can't really judge.

I wish I had 18 Millions to develop mine. Or maybe not, I'm happy with scarce
resources, so little goes wasted.

------
usedtolurk
The website itself is just be the tip of the iceberg - it would need to talk
to multiple back-end systems. $18m wouldn't be unreasonable if the project
required complex legacy integration and/or re-design of underlying
infrastructure.

------
brador
So here's how you do it.

You write a spec sheet, bid low. You want to win the bid. Say 6 mil, maybe
even 5. Then half way through the project, say you need another 3 mil to
finish, and without that you can't finish it. Sunk costs? don't worry, the
flip rate on staff means the sunk costs were the last guys problem.

Continue asking for more until you can't squeeze any more juice out of the
orange that is your client. Congratulations, you just won at corporate
politics. Ship whatever you've done and say it's the best you could do. Done.

~~~
raldi
...and lost at contract law.

~~~
brador
11 Billion: [http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/waste/2011/08/system-
failur...](http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/waste/2011/08/system-
failure-11-billion-nhs-system-finally-abandoned-slamming-high-bill-
taxpayers.html)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd like if someone could please explain why NHS don't negotiate a job price
(and maybe even a 20% contingency fund) and then pay that price for the job to
be done. 50% up front, waymarked payment points and a refund for failure to
complete.

Given the budgets here it seems we should have a MP as minister for NHS IT
systems.

------
coenhyde
From what I can tell:

\- It's hosted on AWS

\- Their CDN is cloudfront

\- 2 elastic AWS loadbalancers

\- Apache webserver, probably with Tomcat

\- Java session id in cookie

I assumed the site would have been either a Java or .Net site. I would have
done it for $12 million ;)

------
justin_vanw
I bet this site (Wynn Las Vegas) costs $18m per year in lost opportunities,
because it's an unusable mess. <http://wynnlasvegas.com/>

It's slow, often times out, randomly doesn't work. The four seasons may have
over paid for their site, but it's incredibly nice.

~~~
mustardhamsters
I think for $18m they're probably making significantly more than that back.
That really is a damned fine website, and you can tell that every piece of it
has been double checked and agonized over with the client.

------
alevans4
Is there an older story on the internet than a software project overruns
budget or doesn't get finished? I'd be more interested to see something like,
software project costs $18M and here's where we went wrong, or software
project costs $18M and here's why the client got their money's worth.

------
tomelders
I suppose only the client can decide wether that's money well spent or not.
And while I think the price is high, it's certainly not the worst hotel
website I've seen, and is probably one of the better ones.

------
sirbrad
The site is awesome. The UX is spot on! I think people have seen the price tag
and expected something unimaginable. Not quite sure why they chose to use an
Adobe application for the cms side of things.

------
md224
Anyone else check the source and notice they're importing jQuery twice?

------
ed209
these kind of headlines are easy, the actual story behind it determines value
for money. For example, this title is about as insightful as - BP spent
£136,000,000 on a "new logo" ...
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1350238/BP-
attacked-o...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1350238/BP-attacked-
over-136m-logo-as-petrol-prices-soar.html)

------
sajidnizami
Odd. Every other place in Middle East is listed, except the one with the most
tourist attractions. Where is Dubai?

~~~
ljf
Not odd - it closed down a while back:
<http://www.fourseasons.com/dubaigolf/message0609/>

------
revorad
Lesson learnt: charge more.

------
funkah
I think it looks great. And, it's in my interest for websites to cost as much
as possible, so I have no problem with this.

I don't understand that thing nerds do where they brag about how they could
have done it in a weekend for $15 and some Mountain Dew. Well, I do understand
it ("look how smart I am"), but it's still obnoxious.

------
luhsna
If they spent 18M for this then they should probably fire their CTO or whoever
approved this budget. IF

------
plf
How? I've just started experimenting with web development and I can't figure
out how it could possibly cost that much. Maybe there is a whole world I
haven't seen yet, but if they had used the latest open source
libraries/frameworks that do half the work for you, would it have cost that
much?

~~~
unreal37
I work in a digital agency, similar to the one who did this. 80% of the budget
is spent in the requirements phase. More than a year doing designs, sending 20
people down to see the client every trip, business requirements gathering,
market analysis, and such.

$18M over 24 months is only $750K per month burn rate. At the typical agency
rate of $150/hr, this is 35 people working on this project. Only 2 of them are
developers. :)

