When discussing major players in the real estate industry, one company stands out: Aroundtown SA, Europe’s third-largest publicly traded real estate company. Founded in 2004, the company specializes in high-yield quality properties with potential for value appreciation in prime locations across top European cities. Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, and London are just a few of the cities where Aroundtown SA invests in commercial and residential real estate. Their focus is on properties with strong fundamentals and growth potential. The company’s extensive portfolio includes hotels, office spaces, and retail properties.

But what if this stability is jeopardized? For Aroundtown SA, the hoster delivered unwelcome news: the website’s PHP needed an urgent update, or aroundtown.de would face contract termination and potential shutdown. A brief moment of shock, especially with the tight deadline. Instead of the usual 8 to 12 months for a website relaunch, Aroundtown SA had just three months to address the issue. The team knew it was time to bring in the professionals. Thanks to the subsidiary, finding a suitable service provider was quick: “codafish was recommended to us by a subsidiary whose website was already managed by the agency. Due to this successful collaboration, codafish became the preferred provider for our IT and IT security team,” summarizes Emiel Bontekoe about the beginning of the partnership. However, the challenge wasn’t just the tight deadline but also the implementation: the goal was for customers not to notice the website relaunch visually. The familiar design and, most importantly, the user experience needed to remain unchanged, just as customers were accustomed to.

codafish was therefore tasked with three major objectives: redesigning the site, creating a new, robust CMS, and migrating two other company websites to this CMS alongside aroundtown.de. Pimcore was the ideal solution for these challenges. As a multi-tenant system, Pimcore allows customers to manage multiple domains from a single instance and consolidate all essential data through master data management and product information management. Emiel Bontekoe approved the recommendation from the Pimcore Gold partner, so once the new structure was established, work began on replicating the design. codafish disassembled the existing website, identified each component, rebuilt them, and then implemented them on the new Pimcore instance, aligning with the goals set by Aroundtown SA for the project.