Hospitality branding is as much a science as it is an art form. In this sector, reputation, style, quality, tone, value, and appeal are pivotal to how your business, whether a hotel, restaurant, or another establishment, is perceived by your target audience and how well you compete in a fast-paced and often crowded market.
Branding is often assumed to be a simple case of choosing some trademark colours and developing a signature logo. In reality, strong, durable, and evergreen brand strategies require an in-depth look at the essence of your hospitality business, bringing the stories of your history and heritage to the fore.
Lets look at some of the most important aspects of hospitality brand strategy and design, how to update and refresh branding to remain current without discarding your company’s origins, and the relevance of timeless branding that doesn’t ebb and flow in popularity along with the trends of the moment.
Great Hospitality Branding: The Core Principles
One of the fundamentals of hospitality branding for any business is positioning the customer at the centre. Every guest, visitor, or client who frequents your venue, uses your services, or dines in your restaurant wants to feel valued and important and to be the main character in their own personal experience.
Thinking about the details of the guest experience can be transformative.
Everything from the softness of bedding and towels to the cocktail menu in the bar, the types of entertainment or music playing in the background, and even the scents you use in your venue spaces play a part.
While these seem like aesthetic or sensory elements, they’re all shaped by your brand strategy. This helps businesses develop a detailed, intricate plan to ensure every part of the guest experience meets or ideally exceeds their customers’ expectations.
Steps Within a Hospitality Brand Strategy Project
Although every brand, business, or group is different, and you might have a diverse or highly niche target market, there are several phases we’d expect to work through to establish the undercurrents of personality, history, and values that dictate and crystallise your brand identity.
- Research: Branding isn’t only focused on graphic design and service quality but requires analyses and research to extract valuable insights, from general industry research to more precise competition mapping, understanding the parts of your brand your loyal customers love, and how you can tap into that feeling and expand on it.
- Brand Vision: Many hospitality businesses find that the perceived identity of their brand is somewhat different between varied stakeholders—this is a golden opportunity to create a unique proposition. Unpicking what your brand represents to you, your workforce, your partners, and your customers can help create a concise vision for how your brand should evolve, giving you the tools to start defining your brand personality based on where you are now and where you’d like to be.
- Brand Styling: The tone, feel, and style of your brand will depend on all of the work thus far but can be influential, where the communications, lettering, colours, fonts, logos, and imagery you use to communicate your value proposition will all be led by the brand identity you have established.
Only once all these steps are complete can you begin to look at more practical aspects of your hospitality brand, from social media content to signage and marketing methods—while incorporating elements of your brand that have stood the test of time.
Why Heritage and Origin Stories Matter in Hospitality Brand Design
So many decisions consumers make when choosing a hospitality service or venue, from luxury resorts to restaurants, a family-friendly catering provider to a party venue, rely on customer experiences and perceptions.
Here are some brief examples to highlight what that might look like in action:
- Heritage hotel brands that have their own unique brand presence foster customer loyalty because customers know what to expect. Because of the brand’s position and credibility, consumers can trust an industry leader to deliver quality, exceptional service, and comfort regardless of location.
- Discerning guests looking for a restaurant might refer to their own memories and experiences, where a high-end establishment has an emotional connection as the setting for special occasions such as birthdays, engagements, and anniversaries—where the brand’s essence feels familiar, welcome, and a safe choice the customer knows they won’t regret.
- Hospitality companies with a great brand story, such as having hosted movie star guests, been the backdrops for famous films or series, or been frequented by legendary cultural icons, are often in sustained, high demand—because hospitality clients want to be associated with or to have experienced first-hand the brands with these reputations and histories.
Brand heritage is even more vital within the luxury end of the hospitality sector, but communicating those stories with coherence and cohesion is essential, ensuring you shape a brand narrative that is noticeable, understandable, and develops a strong, sustained following.
Keeping Your Hospitality Brand Modern and Relevant While Drawing on Your Legacy
The trick is to preserve and protect legacy assets and branding elements while ensuring newer communication and visual identity factors remain compelling.
Legacy branding should be used as a foundation and capture traditions, histories, and achievements that appeal to modern customer demographics.
Rebranding isn’t about erasing your history but honouring the timeless parts of your brand that are easy to recognise and using those to steer your branding refresh, from logo design to colour palettes and the way you reconfigure interiors and menus while keeping long-standing values in front of mind.
Powerful branding and brand refreshes might involve a return to the drawing board in terms of refining your brand position, identity, and feel. Still, many of the assets you need to revitalise a legacy brand are already there.
However, by respecting the origin of your brand and incorporating innovation to bring that branding up to pace with the modern market, you can inject fresh enthusiasm, drive, identity, and purpose into your business—and, along with it, attract new audiences and customers who resonate with your messaging.
