Launching unique Hobbit House holiday homes
21 pieces of national, international and regional news coverage
more than 80,000 video views on socials
multiple bookings directly from marketing activities
Coed Y Ddraig is a family-run self-catering holiday business based in nine acres of private woodland on the side of the Cambrian Mountains, in West Wales. The site specialises in unique, themed holiday homes and has just opened three hand-built underground ‘Hobbit Houses’ inspired by JRR Tolkien.
The new holiday homes featured curved, hobbit-hole architecture, log burners and bespoke four-poster beds. Tolkien’s well-documented love of Wales inspired owners Phil and Sam Kilv to painstakingly create their own take on Middle-earth.
Phil and Sam contacted R&Co Communications to support with the promotion of the new cottages, which had been created at a cost of around £500,000 and have since opened their doors for bookings.
Their challenge was to generate maximum visibility and booking interest for the new cottages around the time of their launch.
OUR APPROACH
R&Co devised a multi-channel plan to produce a range of video content for Coed Y Ddraig’s social media profiles, alongside an SEO project to improve website performance and a media relations campaign with the aim of gaining local and national media coverage.
The campaign was timed to go live with the opening of the first Hobbit House.
Social media marketing: R&Co spent a day on site at the new Hobbit Houses, filming a wide range of video content for use on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. This was supported by a photo shoot to gather press photographs to support the planned PR activity.
PR: R&Co developed a press-ready announcement for the opening of the Hobbit House development, which was pitched to a range of Welsh media outlets, national news desks and lifestyle journalists.
SEO: Utilising our extensive experience in managing transactional websites, we carried out a technical audit of Coed Y Ddraig’s new website, then suggested and implemented a series of optimisations to improve visibility in search engines.
The initial burst of social media activity delivered some fantastic results, with more than 80,000 video views on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. This also drove the addition of 466 new followers across these platforms.
The press release generated 21 pieces of national, international and regional news coverage. Top-tier websites covered the story, including Mail Online, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Daily Express US and AOL, while the story also gained huge coverage across Wales on sites including Nation.Cymru, Cambrian News and the North Wales Chronicle.
It was also picked up by some of the UK’s biggest regional titles, including the Manchester Evening News and Express and Star.
Coed Y Ddraig reported multiple bookings and booking enquiries as a direct result of R&Co’s social media and press activity.
“Working with R&Co Communications delivered impact far beyond traditional PR. Their ability to uncover the emotional core of our story and translate it into compelling, high‑authority media coverage generated a wave of press attention that genuinely elevated our brand and drove bookings. The campaign secured coverage across respected outlets, supported by strong backlinks and multiple linking articles that reinforced our credibility and strengthened our digital presence. R&Co also shaped the narrative through thoughtful work and created our footage, supported our SEO, and helped lay the foundation for our website and wider PR strategy, ensuring every element aligned with the heart of our message. They provided clear, insightful analytics to track how our story travelled across the media landscape, giving us a transparent view of engagement and reach. Beyond their strategic excellence, they were an absolute pleasure to work with- nothing was ever too much trouble, communication was consistently on point, and their commitment to our success was evident at every stage. We highly recommend them.” – Sam Kilv, owner of Coed Y Ddraig
To find out more about how R&Co Communications can help you drive results through our PR, SEO and social media services, please get in touch.