A refined digital concierge for luxury villa rentals in St. Barth

Availability-first search

Sibarth's catalogue spans around 360 villas, each available in multiple bedroom configurations with their own specific availability windows. When a guest searches for a villa, they typically have a target number of bedrooms and a set of dates in mind. This means the search must operate against an availabilities index rather than the villas index — much like hotel booking platforms — to surface only the properties that are genuinely bookable for a given period. We powered this with a local instance of Meilisearch, giving us the flexibility and near-instant response times the experience demanded.

Meilisearch's geosearch capabilities also allowed us to replicate the map-based search behaviour familiar from platforms like Airbnb: as a user pans or zooms the map, a separate, viewport-aware set of results updates in real time, without interrupting the main search flow.

A map worthy of the island

The map is woven into almost every corner of Sibarth's digital presence, from browsing villas and reading editorial articles to discovering restaurants, in both digital and printed formats. Given how central it is to the experience, it had to feel every bit as premium as the brand itself. We designed a fully custom Mapbox style rooted in the visual identity palette, and went a step further: all surrounding landmasses are hidden, and panning is restricted to the island itself. The result is a map that feels tailor-made for St. Barths.

An editorial window onto St. Barths

One of the most significant additions to this iteration of the Sibarth website is its editorial section, "St. Barths Life." Articles are organized across three themes (Our Life, Island Life, and Villa Life) and each is built on a fully modular layout system, with content blocks ranging from pull quotes and carousels to maps and call-to-action buttons. The intention was to create a space that blends practical island knowledge such as things to do, places to see, local stories, with a series of SEO-optimized articles serving as targeted landing pages for specific topics. We built the section on Payload CMS, which gave us the flexibility to develop a bespoke UI block for every module, all seamlessly integrated within the rich text editor.

And more, since 1974

The platform officially launched with the introduction of "Since 1974", a dedicated section highlighting the founders' story, core values, and community contributions. But this project extended well beyond the browser. We also developed a lightweight web application to serve as a welcome screen on tablets at the airport, and built a custom Payload extension that allows the editorial team to compose newsletters directly within the CMS, using existing content and a set of predefined modular templates. The resulting code syncs automatically with Mailchimp, where the emails are then distributed.