Hanmer Springs: Rebuilding a beloved thermal reserve's digital home

Voyage teamed up with QBB to reposition Hanmer Springs as a top tourist destination, moving them onto a modern, multi-site ready platform without losing a day of bookings along the way.

We successfully:

• Rebuilt the site on Sanity, a headless CMS built to run multiple properties from a single install. This lays the groundwork for future sites and ventures to launch from the same platform
• Built the backend to allow for visual "languages" for different visitor audiences (families, couples, groups), expressed through colour, motion and iconography
• Integrated with Ibis, the tourism industry's long-standing booking and point-of-sale platform, preserving critical business operations while building a modern experience around it
• Used AI throughout the build pipeline (from code documentation to automated review on every commit) to keep quality consistent across multiple developers
• Shipped a site that loads fast and feels responsive despite heavy use of video and animation throughout
• Helped Hanmer Springs stand out in an increasingly crowded tourism marketplace, further emphasising that this is the place to be

For a number of years, Hanmer Springs was the only tourist attraction of its kind in the region. Now, with many more options available, the attraction needed its website to make an impact and reflect that it was a modern destination of choice. It also needed to convey the new spa and wellness offerings, and be built so the business could continue to grow, adding new offerings and inspiration, without restriction.

The challenge was to create a powerful and intuitive backend that enabled a fresh new design crafted by QBB, easy and clear navigation for any visitors, integration with the existing booking system, and ongoing room for scalability.

Content and visual design were largely written before development began, giving Voyage’s build team a clear target from day one. Before development began, QBB created interactive Figma prototypes to send to feedback groups. The clickable flows simulated real site behaviour, and were sent to a user-testing group organised in Hanmer Springs itself, with participants given specific tasks, observing how long it took and where they got stuck. Feedback came back strongly positive and directly shaped decisions before the build phase started. This reflects Voyage’s approach to all projects: act on evidence, not assumptions.

AI was used throughout production, not just as a coding aid, but as a consistency layer across the team. Every commit was automatically reviewed for quality, documentation, and consistency against the rest of the codebase before a senior developer looked at it. This allowed code review time to go further and remain consistent across multiple tasks.

"AI can massively accelerate what we do. However, we greatly rely on our existing expertise. With experience comes more confidence in any solution and the ability to articulate what we need clearly. With AI, for instance, I can tell it exactly how I want something done and quickly judge the result, making adjustments as needed." - Shannon Holmes, General Manager, Voyage

Voyage became the builders of the machine that allowed the design to come to life. Whatever QBB envisioned became possible thanks to the expert problem solving of the developers.

Integrations with legacy systems can be challenging, but Voyage successfully included the Ibis booking system seamlessly on the final site. With QBB designs and an outer wrapper built by Voyage, the booking page is fully custom and on-brand, with the Ibis booking flow invisibly embedded.

On the CMS side, the move to Sanity means Hanmer Springs can run multiple branded sites from a single install, cutting licensing costs and consolidating admin into one place rather than several disconnected systems.

Visually, video across the site is masked within continuously morphing vector shapes, creating a subtle, lava-lamp-like effect built to reinforce that this is an experiential brand, not just an informational one.

Utilising the best solutions available for video, animation, hosting and performance, the outcome of every technical decision is a site that runs beautifully, and speaks directly to each target audience with thoughtful and impactful cues, and makes booking easy and enjoyable.

In the weeks following the launch date, the site has drawn consistently positive feedback from both the internal Hanmer Springs team and visitors alike.

What made the difference

• A joint pitch and joint discovery process meant Voyage and QBB were aligned on brief and brand from day one, rather than working in separate lanes
• Interactive prototyping with real local users caught usability issues before a single feature was built, not after
• A multi-site ready Sanity architecture means this site and those to come can launch on the same platform rather than starting from scratch
• AI-assisted development and code review kept quality consistent across multiple developers without adding overhead to the review process
• Designing around Ibis rather than against it delivered a modern front-of-house experience without the cost or risk of replacing business-critical infrastructure

"I was born and raised in Hanmer Springs, so this project is close to my heart. I know so many people up there who rely on the thermal reserve doing well. More visitors through the door means more drop ins at the bakery, more nights booked in local accommodation, more reasons for a small place to keep thriving.

“I’m genuinely proud of what the whole team pulled together here, and proud of the way we did it: no egos, no smoke and mirrors, just showing up and doing the work. The result speaks volumes. It’s a beautiful, experiential site that’s inspiring people to visit that otherwise may have gone elsewhere.” - Shannon Holmes, General Manager, Voyage