Dave — you've built something genuinely special, and this is simply about giving it a home online that matches. Here's a friendly expert's look at where it's strong, how I'd build on it and why, what I'd recommend, and what I'd need from you. A working concept of the new home page is included, and everything is grounded in your own content.
You have strong raw material. None of this gets thrown away — the redesign protects and amplifies it.
“Luxury river cruises, chosen with clarity” and “Be treated like royalty” sell expertise and care, not price — exactly right for a high-value decision.
You are the reason people book: 95+ river cruises, 27 years in Europe, AmaWaterways' #1 passenger through 2022, a #2-ranking agent at OASIS Travel Network, Rick Steves recognition, and your “Royal Court” of repeat guests.
LUXlife 2023 award, top TripAdvisor & Cruise Critic ratings, real testimonials, and real partnerships (Tauck, Avalon, Scenic, Viking, Uniworld, AmaWaterways; ASTA, CLIA, Signature).
Hosted cruises, destinations, pre/post stays, excursions, insurance, self-booking — the ingredients of a great funnel are all there.
The current site was built in Canva — wonderful for designing something quickly, though it wasn't made to run as a full website. Moving to a proper build is what unlocks each improvement below, and every one has a clear payoff for you.
Most of your affluent travellers browse on mobile. A layout that reshapes itself for every screen feels effortless and premium — and keeps people reading rather than pinching to zoom.
A modern build puts your words into the page as real, readable text — so Google can understand and rank you, and travellers searching for a river-cruise expert can actually find you.
Right now your descriptions live inside pictures. Moving them into real text lets Google, screen readers and skim-readers take in everything you offer — the same great content, finally working for you.
A focused journey and a single “talk to Dave” action mean every visitor knows exactly what to do next — which turns more browsers into enquiries.
A simple, reliable enquiry form (alongside email) means no interested traveller slips through because a mail link didn't open.
Analytics shows what's resonating, and bringing your sites under one brand concentrates all your reputation in one place — so everything points back to you.
The concept keeps your content and reorganises it into a clear journey: hero → proof → cruises → who's Dave → how it works → reviews → FAQ → partners → book with confidence → contact.
The home now stays purely about river cruises and you — no ocean trips or land tours muddying the message. Why: it's exactly the clarity your clients were missing, and a tightly focused brand builds stronger authority in its niche. (How this brand sits within the wider family is in the next section.)
A disciplined palette with a single gold accent, two elegant typefaces, big imagery and generous space — designed mobile- and tablet-first. Why: the foundation is the difference between looking premium and looking improvised.
Your bio, your service tiers (DIY Free / Royal Treatment / Royal Court), your fees, your FAQ and your real testimonials — all pulled from your own pages and laid out so people (and Google) can actually read them.
You drew this clearly for me. DNA Tours LTD (“DNAT” when you mean the corporate parent) sits on top. Underneath are your standalone brands — including DNA Tours the web brand (“DNAt”) for land trips, safaris and the full library of your escorted journeys. Each is its own site with its own look; they only introduce each other.
How they relate: four standalone brands under one company. “DNAT” is the corporate parent (DNA Tours LTD); “DNAt” is the consumer web brand for land tours & safaris. River Cruise King and MarisRex keep your blue & gold; DNA Tours keeps its red/white/blue as the bridge to CruiseFinder360, whose own look stays exactly as it is. They're linked only by a tasteful “sister brands” section.
One quality engine: every site is built on the same components, speed and SEO/AEO setup — so four brands don't mean four times the work, even though each looks and feels its own.
There were two real options. I originally leaned toward Plan A — until I understood these are genuinely different brands with different clients. Then Plan B clearly wins. Here's both, side by side.
All three brands live inside a single site, in folders. The other web addresses forward into it.
Each brand keeps its own website and its own look. They simply point customers to each other.
Plan A is one big shop with rivers, oceans and a self-service kiosk all mixed on the same shelves — tidy to run, but shoppers looking for a river cruise keep bumping into ocean things and get a little lost. (That's exactly what was happening to you.)
Plan B is three beautiful boutiques side by side on the same street — one for rivers, one for oceans, one self-service — each with a friendly sign pointing to the others, and all owned by the same company. Each shop is unmistakable, and nobody gets lost.
And for being found online: Google and the new AI search tools trust a site that's about one thing — a site only about river cruises reads as “the river-cruise expert.” Mixing topics waters that down. So separate, focused brands actually help you get found, not hurt you.
About your web addresses: in Plan A they'd forward into one site and disappear. In Plan B every address stays its own living site — they just link to each other, like neighbours pointing the way. Nothing gets lost.
This is where there's the most to gain: because your text currently lives inside images, Google sees an almost-empty page, so the site is hard to find in search. The new build fixes that at the root — and SEO (and AEO) is part of how it's made.
Real text and proper headings (one H1, clear H2s), with your copy pulled out of images — so Google can read and rank every word about your cruises, Dave and the destinations.
Bringing your TripAdvisor & Cruise Critic reviews onto the site — and growing them — feeds both Google and the AI answer engines. It's the area you flagged with the most room to grow, and it's pure trust.
A fast, lightweight site (no heavy Canva runtime). Google explicitly rewards speed — especially on the phones and tablets your guests use.
Marking the site up as a Travel Agency and your itineraries as Trips, so Google can show rich results — star ratings, prices, dates — right in the search listing.
A site that's 100% about river cruises tells Google — and the AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) — that you're the river-cruise expert. Keeping the brands separate lets each build its own topical authority, while structured data quietly links them to DNA Tours LTD so the family is understood without mixing the content. This is exactly the right call for AEO.
Pages built around real queries — “Danube Christmas market cruise”, “Douro wine river cruise 2027”, “river cruise expert/advisor” — plus your articles feeding topical authority over time.
Honest expectation: SEO compounds — rankings climb over weeks and months, not days. But the foundation work is what makes it possible at all; right now your site is blocked from ranking before the race even starts.
For a €5,000–€15,000 decision, people naturally look for proof, protection and a real company behind it. I made all of that easy to see.
Financial protection (ASTA, CLIA, Signature), a real registered company, a named expert (not a call centre), and a no-pressure promise — placed right where buyers hesitate.
TripAdvisor & Cruise Critic badges with stars and links — not just a written claim. (You add the real scores.)
DNA Tours Ltd, Dublin address, phones, company registration and memberships — a business people can identify and check.
95+ cruises, 27 years in Europe, #2 agent at OASIS Travel Network, LUXlife 2023 and your five-star reputation, shown the moment the page loads.
You suggested a chat box — I love it. I'd build it as an AI assistant powered by Claude, trained on your questions and answers, so it talks in your voice, stays accurate, and never sleeps. It doesn't replace you; it answers the easy questions instantly and hands the serious travellers straight to you.
A dedicated photographer/videographer travelling with the group — capturing guests on the ship and in the cities, plus cinematic video — turns every departure into both a guest gift and a marketing engine. It's really a matter of bringing the right photographer on board — I could even do it myself ;)
Travellers go home with beautiful professional photos and a highlight film of their trip — a luxury touch that justifies the price and brings the Royal Court back.
Every sailing feeds the website, social media and the hero video with authentic, high-quality imagery — including the destination photos the site still needs.
Few advisors offer this. “Travel with Dave and take the memories home, beautifully made” is a story competitors can't copy.
Optional add-on for guests, or a signature perk of the Royal Treatment — your call.
Nothing here is invented from scratch — each part runs on proven, off-the-shelf services, and several you already use. You're hosted at IONOS, so I'd build on what you have and keep the stack simple and easy for you to manage day to day.
| Need | What I'd recommend | Alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting & domains | IONOS — you're already here. Part of this is auditing what you pay for and trimming the rest. | — |
| Website build | Next.js or Astro (fast, great SEO/AEO) — hosted on your IONOS | Webflow |
| Easy editing — you, day to day | Storyblok — a simple visual editor to swap a photo or change text yourself. Not Wix, not WordPress. | Webflow Editor |
| AI chatbox | Custom concierge powered by Claude — filters the simple questions, sends ready-to-book people to your calendar | Chatbase / Tidio “Lyro” |
| Reviews on the site | Trustindex / EmbedSocial — pull TripAdvisor, Cruise Critic & Google reviews in | native review widgets |
| Analytics (new for you) | Google Analytics 4 + Microsoft Clarity — both free. I set it up so you finally see what works. | Plausible |
| Book-a-call calendar | Acuity — you already use it; restyled to match the new site | Calendly |
| CRM & workflows | Tern — you already use it; connect enquiries and automate the small stuff | Make / Zapier |
| Email marketing | Flodesk — you use it; keep it, or move to something fresher when you're ready | Brevo / MailerLite |
| Guest memories | 51trips TripBooks + app — you already do this; we feature it as a signature perk | — |
| Privacy & cookie notice | Termly or Cookiebot (US-ready) | iubenda |
You said it clearly: you want to run this day to day and make simple edits yourself — swap a photo, change some text — without the Wix annoyances or a WordPress learning curve. That's exactly what Storyblok gives you: I build the beautiful, fixed structure once, and you edit the easy bits whenever you like.
Built for your North-American audience, mobile-first, with SEO/AEO and analytics from day one — and a simple editor so you run it yourself.
Financial protection, verifiable reviews and a legitimate company identity — already built into the concept.
Your chat-box idea, trained on your Q&A — it answers the simple questions around the clock so only ready-to-book travellers reach your calendar.
The single biggest lever for “luxury.” On-trip content makes guests happy and keeps the brand looking world-class.
The site captures the enquiry and hands it over — I connect to your system, I don't replace it.
Bring DNA Tours and MarisRex in as sections and redirect the old domains so nothing is lost.
Two things to decide: how much we build and in what order, and how it's looked after afterwards. Here's the full breakdown so you can pick the pace and the level of support that fits you. (Indicative ranges — the headline figure, with a standard rate shown below it; the final number depends on the scope we agree together.)
| Phase | What's included | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| 0 · Foundations | The shared design system & reusable engine — brand tokens, components, hosting setup on IONOS, analytics and SEO/AEO. Built once, powers every brand. | €3,500–7,000 std €2,750–5,500 |
| 1 · River Cruise King | The full flagship: home + key pages, your real content, reviews, the AI chatbot, Acuity booking, Tern hand-off and easy hosted-trip sign-up. | €8,400–15,400 std €6,600–12,100 |
| 2 · MarisRex | Your ocean brand — same engine, its own blue & gold look, content and sister-brand links. | €3,500–5,600 std €2,750–4,400 |
| 3 · DNA Tours (land) | Land & safaris brand — red/white/blue, the full library of escorted journeys. | €3,500–5,600 std €2,750–4,400 |
| 4 · CruiseFinder360 | Presentation refresh of the existing tool (its look kept as-is). | €1,400–2,800 std €1,100–2,200 |
| Add-ons | Photo/video production · 51trips feature · content migration off Canva · IONOS audit · review-gathering setup. | quoted per item |
Build River Cruise King first as a fixed project, then add MarisRex and DNA Tours in phases. Pair it with a care plan (or a light dedicated partnership) — because your real goal is your time back, around 20–25 hours a week, with a site that's fed from your trips and pulls your social toward it, not the other way round.
And here's the quiet advantage of a partnership: instead of juggling a web agency and a photographer and a videographer and a content person, it's one person who shoots, edits, designs and builds — and already knows your brand inside out.
Why: you want each site to refer people to the brother brands. I'll add a tasteful “sister brands” section to each one — just confirm the tone you'd like (e.g. “Dreaming of an ocean voyage? Meet MarisRex” / “Prefer to book it yourself? Try CruiseFinder360”).
Why: this decides whether I build on a simple content manager you can edit yourself, and it shapes the budget.
Why: you want to curate who you work with and funnel the rest to your sub-agents — I'll build that hand-off into the site and the chatbot.
As I understand it: #1 — sign up for a hosted trip in a couple of clicks. #2 — custom planning → book a call with you (no more email or WhatsApp “orders”). Overflow → your sub-agents. I'll build the whole site around exactly that.
Why: I pulled them from your live pages but they may be dated — and out-of-date numbers can quietly cost you trust.
Why: these are the exact proofs a cautious buyer checks before paying — real numbers beat written claims.
Why: the chatbox is only as good as the Q&A it's trained on — your FAQ plus the questions you get asked most are the starting point.
Noted: your T&Cs already grant rights to guest photos. Going forward I'll make sure any cruise-line photos/videos we use are fully licensed — no more playing fast and loose.
Why: so I redirect the old domains without losing any ranking you already have.
Why: to design a clean hand-off from website enquiry to your booking workflow, and to phase the work so you see value early.
Answer the questions above; tell me what feels right and what doesn't.
High-fidelity, with your photography and confirmed content.
Responsive, fast, easy-to-edit, SEO/AEO-ready, with analytics, the AI concierge and the trust signals in place.
Bring the other trip types in, redirect old domains, and set up the on-trip content pipeline.
Your booking system stays in your CRM. Your content, your voice and your relationships stay yours. I'm upgrading the foundation and the shopfront — not changing how you run the business.