A week at sea you can book without one WhatsApp message.
Web product
- Status
- Concept / demo: designed and built by the studio to show the process. Not a paid client project.
- Example brand
- Orsa Sailing
- Sector
- Hospitality & travel
- Services
- Strategy, Product design, Build, Booking engine, CMS
- Sheet
- PF-19
- Timeline
- From 8 weeks
Can a family choose a boat, a week and a cabin without asking anyone?
The same WhatsApp questions, every single spring.
/01 The brief
Orsa runs crewed gulet weeks out of a small harbour town. Every spring the team answered the same messages one by one: which boat, which week, is it free, can we take just a cabin. Bookings lived in chats and a shared spreadsheet.
The brief was a booking platform, not a brochure. Guests should see what is free and book it themselves. Owners should keep availability in one place, and the team should stop retyping the same answers every evening.
A product sheet: one week, one boat, one checkout.
/02 The first sheet
The sheet described the readers precisely: families and friend groups booking a whole boat, couples taking a single cabin. Each needed a different path through the same calendar, and the sheet drew both before any screen was designed.
Screens: Home, week search, boat page, availability calendar and checkout, plus the owners’ calendar behind them. Languages: English, German and the local language. The rules went on the sheet too: Saturday-to-Saturday weeks, a 48-hour hold, a deposit to confirm.
PF-19 · Approved
- Type
- Web product: booking platform
- Who it’s for
- Families and friend groups booking a crewed week; couples taking a cabin
- Goal
- Turn WhatsApp enquiries into self-serve bookings
- Pages
- Home, week search, boat page, availability calendar, checkout
- Features
- Saturday-to-Saturday week search, whole boat or cabin, 48-hour hold, 30% deposit
- Languages
- English, German and the local language
- Timeline
- From 8 weeks
Sailcloth white, Aegean ink and a little teak.
/03 The look
The look comes from the boats: sun-bleached sailcloth for the ground, deep Aegean ink for type, and teak for the one accent that means book. Gloock sets the boat names. Hanken Grotesk carries the calendar and the forms.
Every boat is photographed the same way: deck, cabins, crew, the boat at anchor. That makes them comparable like for like, which is the whole point of the search. Nothing is styled to look bigger than it is.
Search by week, then compare boats like for like.
/04 The pages
Week search starts with the only question that matters first: which Saturday. Then it shows every boat free that week, side by side: cabins, length, crew and route. Filters cover whole boat or single cabin, and the size of the group.
Each boat has its own page with a live availability calendar, deck plans and the crew. From there checkout is three steps: the week, the guests, the deposit. A 48-hour hold lets a group agree before anyone pays.
Booked on a phone, by the one person in the group chat.
/05 On the phone
Gulet weeks are often booked by one person on behalf of a group chat. Every week and every boat has its own link, so a choice can be shared with the group and opens on their phones exactly as it was sent.
On a small screen the calendar becomes a list of Saturdays, with free and taken weeks marked in words as well as colour. Checkout asks one question per screen, so nobody loses their place halfway through.
Ready in March, before the season opens.
/06 What was drawn
Orsa is built to be ready in March, in English, German and the local language: week search across the fleet, a page and a live calendar for every boat, and a three-step checkout with the 48-hour hold.
Behind it, the owners now update availability in one calendar instead of a shared spreadsheet. A change made by an owner shows on the boat page straight away, so guests and the team always see the same week.
- Week search across the fleet
- Boat pages with live availability calendars
- Whole boat or single cabin
- Three-step checkout with a 48-hour hold
- One availability calendar for the owners
- English, German and the local language
A booking engine that stays readable when the signal drops.
/07 Performance & access
Guests check their booking from the harbour and from the boat, where the signal comes and goes. Pages carry only what they need, and photographs load after the dates and the boat names, so the important part arrives first.
Before launch we checked that text stays readable at double zoom, that the full checkout works with the keyboard alone, and that free weeks are marked in words, not by colour only. The checks run again every Friday.
Drawn and built by Paftane: Strategy, Product design, Build, Booking engine, CMS.
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