Príncipe Collection

Based in the twin-island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, the Príncipe Collection is a collection of four boutique hotels deeply rooted in the ethos of preserving the natural beauty and cultural heritage of Príncipe. Their mission is to ensure that what makes Príncipe special is maintained and respected by guests and inhabitants for generations to come.

HBD understands the importance of keeping this remote island of Príncipe forested and unique, while also creating financially sustainable businesses that provide economic and social development opportunities for its people, and provide guests with four distinct properties with which to explore the islands of Príncipe and São Tomé.

Find serenity at Sundy Praia, an eco-friendly lodge with 15 tented villas nestled in the heart of a lush jungle filled with banana, beach almond, and coral trees.

Immerse yourself in the history and charm of Príncipe’s chocolate story at Roça Sundy, a beautifully restored former cacao plantation, complete with columned verandas, brightly patterned tiling, and vintage artefacts.

Discover the untouched beauty of Bom Bom, a peninsula retreat with 17 hillside and beachfront bungalows located between two crescents of honey-colored sand, the perfect for exploring Príncipe’s unique flora and fauna, both on land and underwater, offering an intimate connection with nature’s rhythms.

Conveniently located near São Tomé’s city center and airport, Omali serves as an ideal base for exploring the island and connecting to Príncipe. Meaning ‘ocean and source of life,’ Omali is a 30-room boutique hotel opposite rugged Lagarto Beach.

There's a particular kind of frustration in doing genuinely important work that nobody can find.

Príncipe Collection was living it. Four boutique hotels in São Tomé and Príncipe, a real mission to preserve the natural beauty and cultural heritage of the islands, meaningful conservation credentials - and a website that communicated approximately none of it to anyone who wasn't already looking.

Lemongrass Marketing, a B Corp-certified travel communications agency, delivered a full rebrand, platform migration and SEO rebuild for Príncipe Collection (formerly HBD Príncipe), a sustainable boutique hotel group in São Tomé and Príncipe.

Príncipe Collection was leading on sustainability and had the credentials to prove it. But awareness was low, digital performance was inconsistent, and the WordPress site underneath it all had quietly become the ceiling on everything else.

This is more common than it should be. A brand evolves, the positioning sharpens, the sustainability work deepens - and the website stays exactly where it was three years ago, structurally incapable of expressing any of it. You end up with a premium proposition delivered through a platform that reads as anything but.

The brief was a full rebrand and a new website experience, on a platform that could actually scale.

We audited before we redesigned

Most website rebuilds destroy SEO equity, and they do it because the redesign starts before anyone has checked what was working.

So we ran a comprehensive content and SEO audit first. What was ranking? What wasn't? Where was the gap between what Príncipe Collection genuinely offered and what its website was actually communicating to a search engine? That audit became the brief for everything that followed - which meant the redesign was solving identified problems rather than aesthetic ones.

We migrated carefully, and in partnership

We worked alongside Príncipe Collection's external development team through build and QA, specifically to protect existing search equity through the move away from WordPress. In-depth keyword research shaped the new site architecture from the ground up, so every page had a defined purpose and a defined audience rather than existing because the old sitemap had one.

Migrations are where good SEO goes to die. This one didn't.

We built something the team could run without us

A 12-month SEO-optimised content calendar. A structured email marketing programme. A performance-led social strategy focused on conversion rather than vanity engagement.

And then - the part that matters most - we upskilled the internal team to manage and evolve all of it in-house.

There's a version of agency work that quietly engineers dependency. We're not interested in it. The measure of this project is that Príncipe Collection doesn't need to call us to publish a blog post.

Website traffic increased 200% across the project period. Email open rates hit a 30% average, significantly outperforming industry benchmarks. Social media conversion rates rose 40% following strategic optimisation.

And Príncipe Collection is now 80% more visible than its competitors in AI search - a strong indicator that the technical and content foundations we put in place are being read not just by traditional search engines, but by the AI platforms increasingly shaping how travellers discover unfamiliar destinations.

Does migrating away from WordPress hurt SEO? It can, significantly, if handled without a pre-migration audit and careful redirect mapping. Príncipe Collection's migration off WordPress was paired with a full content and SEO audit beforehand and delivered a 200% traffic increase rather than a loss.

What is AI search visibility, and how is it measured? AI search visibility measures how often and how prominently a brand appears in AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. It's assessed by testing target queries across platforms and benchmarking appearance rates against named competitors.

What's a good email open rate for a hotel brand? Industry benchmarks for hospitality typically sit in the high teens to low twenties. Príncipe Collection's 30% average open rate following the restructured email programme sits well above that range.