Terrassi Villa came to us with a dream and we made it happen.

The project therefore started with a blank canvas: understand the accommodation, understand the people it was designed to serve and build a complete digital experience around how a potential guest discovers the property, evaluates its accessibility, finds answers and progresses towards a reservation.

Over approximately four months, Studio 17 developed the project from strategy and UX/UI through to website development, accessibility, multilingual implementation, booking integration, guest support tools, management systems and SEO.

The objective was not simply to put Terrassi Villa online.

It was to build a digital platform that reflected how the business itself was intended to work.

Terrassi Villa website displayed a desktop, showing the accessible digital experience.
Terrassi Villa’s digital experience was designed around accessibility, hospitality and a clearer journey from discovery to booking.

01The project

Terrassi Villa is an accessibility-focused accommodation on Terceira Island in the Azores, Portugal.

Its positioning created a particular digital challenge.

A conventional accommodation website can often rely heavily on photography, room information, destination content and availability. Terrassi Villa needed all of those elements, but it also needed to give potential guests a much clearer understanding of accessibility before they arrived.

For many travellers, describing a property simply as “accessible” is not enough.

Someone may need to understand how they can move through the villa, what an adapted bathroom looks like, how different floors are connected, which spaces have been designed around mobility needs and whether the property works for their individual situation.

The digital experience therefore needed to communicate practical information without losing the emotion and appeal expected from a hospitality brand.

That balance became one of the central principles of the project.

Website interface for Terrassi Villa, showcasing its core message in Portuguese and a gallery of images. A small image of an adapted bathroom with a wheelchair symbol and text 'CASAS DE BANHO ADAPTADAS' highlights the villa's accessible features. Buttons for reservation and accessibility info are visible in the main section.
The newly designed homepage for Terrassi Villa, highlighting its luxurious coastal atmosphere and integrated accessibility features for visitors.

02Designing from zero

With no previous website to inherit, Studio 17 was able to design the architecture around the complete guest journey rather than adapting an existing structure.

Strategy, page architecture, UX/UI, content structure, responsive behaviour, development, accessibility and SEO were treated as parts of the same system.

The journey was organised around a simple sequence:

Discover. Explore. Understand. Trust. Book. Get support.

That sequence influenced how information was prioritised, how pages connected, where accessibility information appeared and how visitors moved towards the booking experience.

Instead of designing pages independently and connecting them afterwards, the website was approached as one continuous customer journey.

The website had to do more than present the property

Terrassi Villa needed a digital platform that could explain accessibility clearly, support international visitors, connect with the booking journey and remain useful to the business after launch.

03Making accessibility part of the experience

Accessibility was not treated as a final feature added after the website had already been designed.

It influenced both the interface and the way information about the property was communicated.

Studio 17 implemented a dedicated accessibility system designed around WCAG 2.1 AA requirements.

Visitors can adjust elements of their browsing experience including text size and spacing, contrast and focus visibility. The interface also includes options such as a dyslexia-friendly typeface, colour-vision modes for protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia, a reading ruler, larger cursor, reduced-motion controls and audio functionality capable of reading page content aloud.

Light and dark viewing modes provide additional flexibility.

These controls give visitors more choice over how they interact with the website, but interface features were only one part of the accessibility strategy.

The property itself also needed to be explained clearly.

04Showing accessibility instead of simply claiming it

One of the key principles behind the project was to reduce uncertainty.

Guests can explore relevant areas of Terrassi Villa and understand more about the environment before deciding whether it meets their requirements.

That means presenting information about areas such as circulation, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen access, outdoor spaces and movement between different parts of the property.

Photography and content therefore serve more than a visual role.

They help potential guests understand how the villa works.

For accessible tourism in particular, this distinction matters. A broad accessibility claim asks the visitor to trust the business. Detailed information gives the visitor more ability to evaluate the property independently.

Accessibility should help people make informed decisions, not simply give a website another label.

Hugo Filipe, founder of Studio 17

05Building for an international audience

Terrassi Villa operates within an international tourism market.

The website therefore needed to provide the same core experience to visitors from different countries rather than treating multilingual content as a secondary addition.

Studio 17 implemented the website across five languages.

The multilingual structure was considered during the architecture and SEO setup so that important property information, accessibility details and the wider guest journey remained connected across the different language versions.

This was particularly important for a project where clarity matters.

Accessibility information loses much of its value if international visitors cannot easily understand it.

06Connecting discovery with booking

A hospitality website ultimately needs to support reservations.

The experience was therefore designed to move visitors naturally from discovering Terrassi Villa and understanding the accommodation towards checking availability and progressing through the relevant booking steps.

Studio 17 connected the booking infrastructure into the website rather than treating reservations as an unrelated part of the experience.

The objective was to make the transition from inspiration to action feel connected.

This meant thinking beyond the appearance of the public website and considering the systems supporting it.

Behind the guest-facing experience, Studio 17 also built a management dashboard that gives the Terrassi Villa team a central environment for managing the website and connected operational elements.

The website was therefore designed both for the people visiting it and for the business responsible for operating it.

07Guest support beyond business hours

Not every potential guest explores an accommodation website during working hours.

And when accessibility is an important part of the decision, visitors may have questions that are more specific than a standard accommodation FAQ can answer.

Terrassi Villa therefore includes Maria João, a 24/7 FAQ assistant designed to help visitors find answers while they explore the website.

The assistant provides another support layer within the guest journey, helping people access common information without searching through multiple pages or waiting for a manual response.

It does not replace direct communication when someone has an individual requirement.

Instead, it gives visitors another immediate way to understand the property and continue their journey.

08Building SEO into the foundation

Terrassi Villa started without an existing website or established technical search structure.

SEO therefore needed to be built from the beginning rather than repaired after launch.

Studio 17 implemented the on-page and technical SEO foundation as part of the development process.

This included metadata, structured data, sitemap configuration, image alternative text, indexing foundations, Search Console setup and the technical structure required to help search engines understand the website.

Treating SEO as part of the build also meant the architecture, multilingual implementation, content and technical development could be considered together.

SEO was not a final checklist completed after the website was finished.

It was part of the platform being built.

09From concept to launch in four months

Approximately four months after starting without a website, Terrassi Villa had a live digital platform bringing together multiple parts of the guest and business experience.

4 monthsapproximately from concept to launch
5website languages
24/7FAQ support through Maria João
A desktop computer monitor sitting on a wooden desk displays the new Terrassi Villa website homepage. To the left of the monitor is a potted snake plant, and to the right, a closed laptop connected to an orange external hard drive.
Desktop view of the Terrassi Villa website, presenting a clear and accessible user interface tailored for international guests.

10The result

Terrassi Villa now has a digital platform built around many of the same principles that define the accommodation itself: accessibility, clarity, independence and hospitality.

Potential guests can discover the property, explore its spaces, understand relevant accessibility information, adapt parts of their browsing experience, use the website in their preferred language, access immediate support and progress towards a reservation within one connected environment.

Behind the scenes, the Terrassi Villa team also has the systems required to manage and support that experience.

The project demonstrates why hospitality websites sometimes need to go beyond presenting rooms and availability.

When the business itself has a distinctive purpose, audience or operating model, the digital experience needs to reflect it.

Terrassi Villa was not built simply to have a website.

The website was built to support how Terrassi Villa welcomes people, communicates accessibility and operates online.