Aurum Palace Hotels.
A cinematic booking experience for a five-star Dubai hotel group — WebGL lobby walkthrough, gold-leaf design system, and a direct-booking flow that tripled conversions.
- Client
- Aurum Palace Hotels & Resorts
- Role
- Lead Designer & Developer
- Year
- 2025
- Stack
- Art Direction · UI/UX
Overview
Aurum Palace wanted digital as grand as their lobbies. I built a scroll-driven, cinematic website where each suite unfolds like a scene — chandelier-particle WebGL intro, gold-on-black design language, and a frictionless three-tap booking flow.
Goals
- 01Position Aurum as Dubai's most cinematic hotel brand online
- 02Move revenue from OTAs to the direct booking engine
- 03Sub-1.5s LCP on hotel Wi-Fi and 4G devices
- 04Arabic + English parity with full RTL support
The experience
Designed to be felt, not just seen.
Process
How it came alive.
- 01
Discovery
On-site immersion at two properties, OTA funnel audit, and competitor teardown of 14 luxury hotel sites.
- 02
Art Direction
Moodboards blending Emirati geometric lattices with art-deco gold. Typography: high-contrast display serif paired with clean grotesque.
- 03
Design System
A 120-component Figma library — gold gradient tokens, glass surfaces, motion specs for every state.
- 04
Motion & 3D
Three.js chandelier particle intro (8k particles, GPU-instanced), GSAP scroll scenes per suite, Lottie micro-interactions on CTAs.
- 05
Build & QA
Next.js with ISR, AVIF imagery, edge caching across GCC regions; LCP measured on real devices in JLT.
- ⚡
Animations used
- WebGL particle lobby
- Pinned horizontal suite gallery
- Magnetic booking CTA
- Scroll-scrubbed room reveal
- Page-wipe transitions
Design system
One palette.
One voice. Everywhere.
Typography scales, spacing rhythm, motion tokens and a color system engineered for both midnight-black luxury and sun-lit readability — documented so the brand never drifts.
#000000
#D4AF37
#F5F5F5
#2a2118
Type pairing
Clash Display / Satoshi
Inter for long-form · Space Grotesk for data
The results
+212%
Direct bookings
1.1s
Largest Contentful Paint
−38%
Bounce rate
“Shijina gave us a website that feels like walking into our lobby. Direct revenue doubled in one quarter — our OTA commission bill tells the story.”
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