The covered back porch of a North Ridge Escapes home, with outdoor sofas, a hanging chair and woods beyond

North Ridge Escapes

A good stay starts here

Nine homes. Three destinations. One place to plan your time away. We created a new brand identity and direct-booking website for North Ridge Escapes, helping guests find their home, see the full price, and reserve their stay without leaving the site.

Project
North Ridge Escapes
Client
North Ridge Escapes, Chattanooga
Role
Brand identity, UX / UI design, and full-stack development
Scope
A new brand mark, a direct-booking website, a live OwnerRez integration, and Payload CMS
Live Site

The Prompt

More room to book direct

North Ridge Escapes manages nine vacation homes across Chattanooga’s North Shore, Blue Ridge, Georgia, and Spring City, Tennessee, on Watts Bar Lake. Booking through Airbnb or VRBO adds commissions that increase the cost for guests. The business needed a way to welcome those guests directly.

We built a website where travelers can compare homes for their dates and group, get an exact quote, and book on northridgeescapes.com. Behind the scenes, reservations stay in OwnerRez, the system the team already uses to run the business.

The homepage on desktop and mobile, with video setting the scene in the opening slide.

The Brand

A little of the landscape

We designed the identity alongside the website, drawing on the ridgelines around Chattanooga and Blue Ridge. Three rooflines echo the landscape, with a window in the center roof adding a sense of home. A serif wordmark and the line “Made for moments together” complete the identity.

Navy, forest, gold, and cream carry through a flexible set of brand elements: the full lockup, a wordmark, a standalone mark, and a circular badge.

The North Ridge Escapes brand board: the full lockup on navy, the badge on forest and gold, the mark, the wordmark and seven brand colors
The brand marks and palette, designed to work together across print and digital.

Brand in Use

Make yourself at home

The brand should feel as natural on a porch sign as it does on a booking page. We explored how the identity could carry through a stay, from the welcome card at check-in to a tote for a walk into town.

A navy hanging sign painted with the North Ridge Escapes logo under a cabin porch, with autumn mountains behind
The full lockup on a painted porch sign.
A North Ridge Escapes welcome card printed in navy on a wooden table, beside a house key on a leather tag debossed with the mark
A welcome card and debossed key tag for check-in.
A cream North Ridge Escapes mug on a deck railing above a misty lake at sunrise
A little branding with morning coffee at the lake.
A coir doormat printed with the North Ridge Escapes wordmark in front of a green cabin door
A welcome at the doorstep.
A forest green tote bag screen printed with the North Ridge Escapes logo, hanging on a cabin wall
A tote for the trip into town.

The Website

Find your kind of getaway

Planning starts with who’s coming and when. Search brings together homes that fit the group and dates, with exact matches first and nearby dates for guests who have a little flexibility. Bedroom and pet filters help narrow the options.

Each listing groups photos by room, shows nightly rates on the calendar, and provides an itemized quote when guests select their dates. A planning grid shows open nights across all nine homes, while the Guestbook brings guest reviews together in one place.

The full North Ridge Escapes homepage, from the hero slideshow to the footer
The homepage.
The full Coolidge Retreat listing page, with photo mosaic, booking panel, rooms and reviews
A closer look at one of the homes.
An angled array of North Ridge Escapes pages: home, search results, a listing, availability, the Guestbook, the Stay Guide, Our Story and Let’s Connect
Ten page templates connect the experience from search to checkout.
Five North Ridge Escapes pages on phones: search, a listing with its booking bar, the home page, the Stay Guide and Our Story
On mobile, a booking bar stays along the bottom of the screen.

OwnerRez Integration

Connected to the source

The website connects to OwnerRez for property details, calendars, nightly rates, fees, taxes, photos, and reviews. Server-side updates keep that information in sync, while quotes are requested live for each stay. The team can keep managing reservations in one place without entering the same information twice.

Guests pay through OwnerRez’s secure checkout, embedded on the page. Card details never pass through the website’s server. If checkout takes too long to load, guests see the team’s phone number and email so they still have a way forward.

How the data flows

From OwnerRez

The system the team already runs the business on

  • Every hour

    Homes

    Bedrooms, bathrooms, pet limits, map locations, and check-in times for all nine homes.

  • Every 5 minutes

    Calendars and rates

    Available nights, nightly rates, and minimum stays, up to 400 days ahead.

  • Live

    Quotes

    An exact price for the dates and group, including fees and taxes. Quotes are never cached.

  • Every hour

    Photos and reviews

    Photo captions, amenities, house rules, and guest reviews.

On the server

Where the two sources meet

  • Server-side

    Merge and cache

    Connects each OwnerRez property to its CMS record. The API key stays on the server.

  • Editorial content

    The team’s words

    Display names, descriptions, featured photos, room lists, page copy, and SEO layered onto the property data.

On the site

What guests see

  • Home and search

    Find a stay

    Search across all homes, with exact matches followed by nearby dates.

  • Listing pages

    See the price

    Nightly calendar rates and an itemized quote after dates are selected.

  • Availability and Guestbook

    Plan with confidence

    Open nights across all nine homes and more than 1,500 five-star reviews.

Booking direct

From search to a confirmed stay

  1. 1

    Search

    Choose a destination, dates or flexible dates, and who’s coming, including pets.

  2. 2

    Choose a home

    Compare the homes that fit, with an estimated total for each.

  3. 3

    See the full price

    Review an itemized OwnerRez quote and stay rules in plain language.

  4. 4

    Reserve

    The selected home, dates, and group carry into the booking form.

  5. 5

    Pay and confirm

    Complete the reservation through OwnerRez’s secure checkout on the page. Card details stay with OwnerRez.

After 12 seconds without checkout loading, the page displays the team’s phone number and email. Guests who want to ask a question before booking can switch the same form to an inquiry.

The Back End

The team can take it from here

OwnerRez handles reservations. A custom Payload CMS admin gives the team control over the site’s content, with tools organized around the work they do most. Contact messages are saved in the CMS and emailed to the owner as they arrive.

The North Ridge Escapes Payload CMS dashboard with a greeting, counts, and grouped shortcuts

Dashboard

Start with the everyday

The dashboard opens with a greeting, this week’s messages and newsletter sign-ups, and shortcuts to common tasks. Collections appear in the order the team uses them, with a matching sidebar for easy navigation.

The Payload CMS inbox listing sample guest messages with names, emails and dates

Inbox

Keep the conversation together

Every Let’s Connect message is saved in the CMS and emailed to Beth. Reply-to is set to the guest, so she can respond directly from her inbox. Newsletter sign-ups are collected alongside the messages.

The Coolidge Retreat record in Payload CMS, showing the rooms OwnerRez publishes and the SEO checks

Each Home

Connected details for every home

Each home record brings editorial content and OwnerRez data together. The team manages display names, descriptions, room details, and search information in the CMS. A note at the top makes clear that rates, availability, amenities, and reviews are managed in OwnerRez.

The photo tour editor in the Payload CMS dark theme, with five featured photos and a room menu under every OwnerRez photo

Photo Tour

Every room has a place

OwnerRez doesn’t identify the room shown in each photo, so the website uses captions to organize the tour automatically. Editors can adjust those assignments and choose the five photos that introduce each home.

The Home page entry in Payload CMS, open to the hero slides tab

Page Content

Edit in page order

Each main page has its own CMS entry, with tabs that follow the layout from top to bottom. Empty fields hide their corresponding elements, and saving refreshes the live site.

Under the Hood

The tools behind it

Framework
Next.js 16 with the App Router, hosted on Render
CMS
Payload CMS 3 on Postgres, running in the same app
Reservations
OwnerRez API v2 for homes, calendars, rates, quotes, photos, and reviews
Booking
Embedded OwnerRez booking widget with an inquiry option
Email
Resend for contact alerts and newsletter sign-ups
Brand
Cormorant Garamond and Montserrat, with navy, forest, gold, and cream

North Ridge Escapes now has a recognizable identity and a direct path from planning a getaway to booking a stay. Guests can explore every home in one place, while the team keeps the reservation system it knows and gains the tools to manage its own website.

Nine homes in three destinations, with one place to book.

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