Maniwa Sense
Brand and website for an experiential stay in rural Okayama — designed before the house could take a single booking.
Overview
Building the brand before opening the doors
Maniwa Sense is a planned experiential stay in Maniwa, Okayama — a traditional Japanese house in the forest, built around seasonal living and a piano that faces the trees. As the solo designer I led concept development, information architecture, web design, and the Wix build across four weeks.
Challenge
A destination with nothing to sell yet
A destination with nothing to sell yet
The house was still under construction. No rooms, no rates, no reviews, no photographs of an actual stay. And Maniwa competes for attention with every other destination in Japan and beyond — a forest, an old house, and a piano are not, on their own, a reason to travel.
So the site had to answer one question before it could do anything else: why would someone want to come here?
Strategy
Don’t sell the stay. Make the experience unforgettable.
Don’t sell the stay. Make the experience unforgettable.
I stopped organizing the site around accommodation and organized it around how belief forms — Understand, Imagine, Trust, Participate. Two decisions carried it.
One image, repeated
Nature, the house, the seasons, and music were all competing to be the headline. I made one of them the anchor: playing piano toward the forest. It carries the hero and returns at every key section, so visitors leave with a single image rather than four impressions.
The build itself as proof
With no guests to quote, credibility had to come from openness. Story sets out why the project exists; Journal records the seasons, the work on the house, and ordinary days in Maniwa. The pre-launch period stopped being a gap in the content and became the content.
Information Architecture
A sequence, not a menu
A sequence, not a menu
The order moves from “what is this?” to “what would it feel like?”, then “why does it exist?” and “how do I stay involved?” Rooms, facilities, and access — where an accommodation site usually opens — are deliberately absent, because none of them answer the first question.
Contact stands where the booking button would be: a way for future guests and collaborators to reach the project while reservations are still a long way off.
Final Design
Restrained layouts, one loud idea
Restrained layouts, one loud idea
Photography does the persuading; type and layout stay quiet enough to let it. Built in Wix so the client can publish Journal entries without a developer, and so rooms, rates, and booking can be added once the house is finished.
Success Framework
Measuring interest, not bookings
Measuring interest, not bookings
Conversion is the wrong target for a site that cannot yet convert. Three signals show whether the positioning is working.
Engagement
Interaction with key experience content
Interest
Visits to Story and Journal
Connection
Contact-page visits and enquiries
Reflection
Not every stay site should open with a booking button
Not every stay site should open with a booking button
The default accommodation template — rooms, rates, availability — assumes there is something to book. Starting from what this project actually had, a place and a story and a piano, produced a clearer site, and one that can grow into the conventional version later without being rebuilt.