Kabin: hotel websites from Wayfarer to Kabin

Kabin grew out of Wayfarer Hotels. When we started, the group had two properties in Kyoto under one website: Wayfarer Kyoto Shijo and ORI Kyoto, each with its own brand identity. The group has since expanded and become Kabin, with more properties of different types.

We've worked on its websites through every stage: designing and building the bilingual Wayfarer Hotels site, bringing the new Kabin site to launch in 2023, and supporting it ever since.

2021 to 2022: Wayfarer Hotels and ORI Kyoto

Wayfarer Hotels asked us to design and build a new website that felt sophisticated and professional. They provided mobile wireframes for four pages; we expanded those into wireframes for 14 pages, then mockups that went through 62 rounds of revisions with a review group of about seven people.

We built the site in Webflow with REM-based type and spacing so it held up across screen sizes, plus the features the hotels needed:

• A booking bar that sends guests straight to the hotels' booking engine.
• A page for each property, Wayfarer Kyoto Shijo and ORI Kyoto, with ORI keeping its own logo and look inside the same site, plus a rooms CMS with a detail page for each room type.
• Community pages where visitors can save their favorite local spots to a personal list.
• English and Japanese versions with Weglot, with custom styling for Japanese text so words don't break mid-line.
• A knowledge base with video tutorials and written guides, and a simpler way to reorder rooms and partners in the CMS, so the team could run the site themselves.

The site launched in January 2022, and the team added new property pages themselves as the group grew, with our support.

2023: Bringing Kabin to launch

As the group expanded into Kabin, it brought us in to take the new Kabin website to launch. Kabin's in-house product designer designed most of the pages in Figma. We built them in Webflow and worked closely with the developer building the React booking app, so the Webflow marketing pages and the app's pages share one domain and feel like one seamless experience. The site went live in August 2023 with its legal pages, including a Japanese commercial disclosures page, and the blog followed in November with a video walkthrough for the team.

We designed the pages those files didn't cover ourselves, in the same style as the rest of the site: the blog and articles, careers, and a page for property investors.

2024: Localization, room guides and sustainability

• Set up Webflow Localization for English and Japanese and recorded a training video, then rebuilt the careers CMS to work with it.
• Built room guides for ten properties across Kabin, Wayfarer and ORI, with photo lightboxes, captions and a table of contents.
• Designed and built a sustainability page around Kabin's plastic-collection partnership with CleanHub and its plastic-free amenities.

2025 onward: Ongoing updates

We keep making updates as the brand grows: new fields and filters for the Local Spots guides, a Japanese About page with a tutorial on adding languages, and regular content and layout changes for the operations and marketing teams.

One partner across every stage of the brand. The Wayfarer Hotels site launched in January 2022 and the team updated it with minimal guidance. The Kabin site launched in August 2023 in English and Japanese, and the team still sends its Webflow updates our way.

“He's excellent and has a deep understanding of Webflow.” Winston Chu, Kabin