Accueil Canada: hospitality website design for a guest experience platform

Accueil Canada is the Canadian edition of the Accueil guest experience platform site. It builds on the US edition, then changes what matters: Canadian spelling (colour, centre, but -ize), provinces and postal codes, CAD pricing with GST/HST, PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25, CASL consent, and a Toronto-led story from 9,000 venues across Canada.

Project facts

• Client: Accueil Hospitality Inc. (fictional)
• Sector: Hospitality technology (restaurants, hotels, nightlife)
• Markets: Canada, with Toronto as the home market and venues from Vancouver to Halifax
• Services: Market localisation · Copywriting · Brand adaptation · Hospitality SaaS website design · Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) · SEO foundations
• Templates: 11 page templates shared with every Accueil edition
• Stack: Hand-built HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript; one strings file and one theme file per market

The brief

Close to the US, but unmistakably Canadian

The US edition sold a complex platform with an editorial, hospitality-first site. Canada keeps that structure and changes the content: Toronto replaces Chicago, the Canadian Diner Report replaces the American one, prices are in CAD with GST/HST noted, addresses use provinces and postal codes, and the legal pages cover PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25 and CASL. The palette shifts from black and vermilion to a crisp civic scheme: paper white, sage and one restrained red for emphasis.

Designing for Canada

What actually changed between the US and this edition

• Story - US edition: US launch, 27 markets · Canada: Toronto-founded, 9,000+ venues across Canada
• Spelling - US edition: color, center, favorite · Canada: colour, centre, favourite (with -ize kept)
• Research - US edition: American Diner Report · Canada: The 2026 Canadian Diner Report, 10,000 diners across 13 provinces and territories
• Pricing - US edition: USD, sales tax · Canada: CAD, shown before tax with GST/HST (+PST/QST where applicable)
• Addresses - US edition: ZIP code, state · Canada: Postal code, province; 220 King Street West, Toronto ON M5H 1K4
• Legal - US edition: US privacy, CAN-SPAM · Canada: PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25, CASL express consent, AODA accessibility
• Look - US edition: Black, white, vermilion; Fraunces + humanist grotesk · Canada: Paper white, sage and restrained red; Inter Tight + Inter
• Locale - US edition: US · UK · AU · UAE switcher · Canada: Canada first, with a disabled 'FR, bientôt / coming soon' toggle

Brand adaptation

The same Accueil, with a local accent

The palette moves to paper white with sage and a single restrained red, which reads civic and nature-adjacent rather than flag-led. Inter Tight for headlines and Inter for body copy keep the site crisp and highly legible. The hospitality first, software second idea stays; the Canadian edition simply sounds calmer and more local.

Homepage and key journeys

The homepage opens on a full-screen dining room in service, with frosted-glass notification cards that now read Deposit received · $240 CAD and 9,000+ venues across Canada. The headline rises line by line, the photo scrolls slower than the page, and the header turns solid once you leave the hero. Below, alternating feature sections tell the reservation, CRM and marketing story through service moments, and the stats band counts up Canadian venue numbers. The most distinctive flow is the demo request: venue type, number of locations and province, ending in a 'table's set' thank-you state.

Compliance, accessibility and trust

• Privacy policy under PIPEDA, with Quebec Law 25 noted for Quebec residents and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the complaint route.
• Terms of Service for Accueil Hospitality Inc., Toronto, with fees in Canadian dollars and GST/HST excluded.
• CASL-compliant express consent checkbox for commercial email, unticked by default.
• Accessibility statement referencing AODA and WCAG 2.2 AA.
• Passes automated WCAG 2.2 AA checks on every page at 360, 390, 768 and 1440 px: no contrast failures, no unreachable controls, no horizontal scrolling.
• A language switcher built from hreflang sits in the header on desktop and in the footer on phones.

One system, twelve markets

Every visible string lives in one file per market, and every colour and typeface in one theme file. This edition needed no new templates or components: a strings file, a theme, regional photography and local legal content made it a different brand experience. For a hospitality-tech company with international plans, a new market becomes a content project rather than a rebuild.

Deliverables

• Market profile: language, formats, legal and seasonality
• Full localised copy across 11 templates, header, footer and forms
• Brand adaptation: palette, type pairing and logo descriptor
• 22 regional photographs (Pexels, credited in credits.json)
• Local legal content
• Accessibility pass (WCAG 2.2 AA, automated) and QA at four screen widths
• Portfolio media: stills, full-page captures, scroll video, OG image, brand board