Case Study: Building Sunset Agafay’s Website With CMI Payments

Sunset Agafay is a luxury boutique resort in the Agafay Desert, about 30 minutes from Marrakech, and its website at sunsetagafay.com lets guests browse suites, the restaurant and desert experiences in English or French and book and pay directly by card through CMI. We designed and built it in Next.js in about six weeks. This is how it works and why.

The property and the brief

Four suites (42 m² suites from €214 a night, a 133 m² Family Suite from €456), a desert restaurant, La Table du Désert, open to outside guests by reservation, an infinity pool, day passes, and experiences such as camel rides, quad and buggy tours and stargazing. People already search for "sunset agafay" and "sunset agafay resort", so the brief was a site that converts that branded traffic into direct bookings rather than OTA reservations.

What we built

• A page per suite, per experience, per dining option and for day passes: each answers its own questions and can rank on its own.
• A 15-question FAQ on transfers, policies and dietary needs: the logistics that decide a luxury booking.
• Bilingual EN/FR content with a proper language structure for search.
• Direct reservation with CMI card payment, next to bank transfer and cash on arrival.
• Photography-led, minimalist design that stays fast on mobile.

Why CMI

CMI is the Moroccan bank gateway: it accepts Moroccan and international cards, and guests trust a payment page from a Moroccan bank. Paying direct means the resort avoids a 15% OTA commission on each stay. We explain the numbers in Airbnb fees in Morocco: keep more with direct bookings, and the setup in the CMI payment gateway guide.

What we would tell any resort owner

Show real prices and availability. Put the payment step in your own flow. Write the logistics page before the guest asks. Use one page per offer. And keep OTAs as an acquisition channel while sending repeat guests to your own site. For the buying side, read direct booking websites for riads: features, cost and CMI payment.

See the project summary on the Sunset Agafay case study page, or visit the live site at sunsetagafay.com.