Santa Monica is one of the most recognizable destinations in the world — the pier and its Pacific Wheel, the wide beaches, the palm-lined streets running down to the ocean. Santa Monica Travel & Tourism’s website carries that brand for a huge audience, so the work here was less about reinventing the site and more about elevating it: bringing a refreshed brand to life on the pages that matter most.
Brand Refresh
I led a brand refresh of the homepage, translating Santa Monica’s updated look and feel into a modern, polished front-end. That meant carrying the new visual identity through the hero, the typography, the bold navy and cyan palette, and the editorial sections that guide visitors from “I’m thinking about a trip” to “here’s exactly what I’ll do.” The homepage is the front door, and the goal was for it to feel unmistakably like Santa Monica the moment it loads.
Top-Level Landing Pages
Beyond the homepage, I built out key top-level landing pages, including the hotels and places-to-stay experience and a set of persona pages aimed at different kinds of travelers. This is where my marketing background really comes into play. Persona-driven pages only work when the structure and the content are shaped around who the visitor actually is and what they came for, so I focused on building flexible, on-brand templates that meet each audience where they are.
Revamped Listings
I also revamped the site’s listings, the detail pages behind hotels, restaurants, and attractions. These are the pages that quietly do the heavy lifting on a destination site, and they needed to be both beautiful and genuinely useful: rich galleries, clear amenities, maps and directions, and a clean path to “check rates” or “visit website.” A good listing is where inspiration turns into an actual booking, so getting these right matters as much as any hero image.
Across all of it, the throughline was consistency. A brand refresh is only as good as how completely it carries through the pages people actually use, and that is exactly where I focused my work on santamonica.com.
