Remarkable Royal Wedding website traffic fails to ruffle The Goring

The Goring Hotel’s high profile association with the Middleton Family and the Royal Wedding saw its website traffic spike 19,000%* last Friday; yet, like the Hotel and its efficient staff, it never lost its cool under intense media pressure.

Nucleus, the digital agency that designed, built and hosts The Goring’s website, ensured that its relatively modest single server web infrastructure need not necessarily mean a website unable to contend with huge, burstable demand periods.

Richard Levy, Nucleus’ Head of Technology, suggests it was down to the way the website was built and tuned for high performance “The significant advantages of an integrated design, build & application hosting service are clear from our experience with The Goring. We were able to ensure that we delivered a highly optimised site on very affordable infrastructure that could cope with sustained high levels of traffic over several days, peaking with 14,000 visits per hour and over 29 page views per second on the morning of April 29th. To put that in perspective that’s almost as many visits in a minute than the site normally receives in a day.”

Interest in The Goring’s website was worldwide, with particularly high US, Canadian and Australian traffic. Users did not just look at one or two pages, as bounce rates were just 16% (half industry averages) with the average visitor session of 9.78 pages per visit. Remarkable figures, for a remarkable hotel, on a remarkable and memorable day.

*Year-on-year figure for the same day in 2010

Editor’s notes

About Nucleus
Nucleus is the world’s only brand, digital and intellectual property consultancy. Founded in 1979, this independent consultancy specialises in the luxury, travel and financial services sectors.

Nucleus was the first brand consultant to create an integrated brand and digital consultancy in 1995 and remains committed to bringing brand experiences to life across all media and all customer touchpoints.

Nucleus Managed Services division hosts many of the travel and financial services websites Nucleus designs and builds, ensuring seamless operations and integrated infrastructure and application management support.

Nucleus is also recognized for practising what it preaches by backing its own ventures, including Luxury Explorer ‘The World Atlas of Luxury Travel’ and sQuid, a next generation small payments and rewards system.

Nucleus hosting clients include: AiTO, Amanresorts, Ballyfin, Corinthia Hotels and Resorts, EBA (European Banking Authority), Hotel La Tour, Inntravel, Journey Latin America, Luxury Explorer, Rothschild Private Banking & Trust and sQuid.

The Goring
The Goring was opened by Otto Goring in 1910. It is now the only five star luxury hotel in London that is owned and run by the family that built it. Jeremy Goring is the fourth Goring to run The Goring since his great-grandfather opened it. Deep in the heart of Belgravia, just behind Buckingham Palace, the hotel is within strolling distance of the Royal Parks and the best shops, theatres and galleries in town. As it celebrates 101 years of service the interiors have been refreshed by some of the country’s finest designers. The Dining Room, designed by David Linley, is a haven for superbly cooked English food using British ingredients. The Bar has been gloriously transformed by Tim Gosling in a theatrical, Empire style and Russell Sage has just completed six rooms overlooking the garden using Gainsborough Silks.

Above all, The Goring reflects one family’s passion for quality – whose members have prided themselves on providing comfort, good food and drink and the most attentive service for one hundred years.

Contact details for further information

Nucleus
Peter Matthews, Managing Director
Or Henriette Pope
hpope@nucleus.co.uk  tel: +44 (0)20 8398 9133

The Goring
Demelza Dallow, Mango PR
demelza.dallow@mangopr.co.uk  tel: +44 (0)20 7421 2508