Destination branding is an area of our brand-building practice that we savor. Over our lifetime as an agency, we have built brands for hotels, motels, glamping retreats, a premium hostel, an entire city, and a host of other travel tourism destinations. We have branded a Relais & Châteaux Resort, top-ranked restaurants, and one of Time Magazine’s World’s Greatest Places. We collaborate to craft destination brands that people drive across the country to experience and fly across the globe to visit.
Each of our destination brands is as unique as the location, geography, architecture, and people behind it. Every destination offers unique opportunities to surprise, delight, and connect with guests in significant and thoughtful ways. Though these opportunities are varied, some aspects of our approach as a brand development agency for hospitality remain consistent—whether we’re branding a rustic retreat, neighborhood oasis, or mountaintop resort.
Impactful destination branding demands a holistic approach to developing an immersive brand world that unites cultural heritage, geography, hospitality, and all other aspects of the guest experience. It’s a 360-degree exercise that ignites all of the senses in an aspirational brand that feels like a stay at the property—even if the guest has never visited. The results of this place-branding process serve as the foundation for all destination marketing efforts, content creation, and even interiors, menus, and more. Establishing a strong foundation that is enticing and inspiring is critical in destination branding.
In building a destination brand, it is crucial for success that brand development happens in the initial phase of each concept rather than a more surface-depth exercise after the fact. The best destination branding integrates brand and story into every moment of the customer journey, whether in person or digital. Selecting the right branding agency is the first step in manifesting those experiences.
Key Factors in Destination Branding
Destination branding is the summation of all aspects of a hospitality experience distilled into one compelling narrative that inspires action and affinity. At a high level, the work is driven by three key factors fundamental to a destination brand: reputation, identity, and perception.
Reputation is earned over time through ongoing effort—cultivating positive experiences, ensuring consistent quality, and managing the destination efficiently.
Identity is the summation of the characteristics, values, and attributes that distinguish a destination. Identity must be rooted in authenticity and reflect a destination’s unique selling propositions: accommodations, amenities, location, traditions, and natural beauty, to name a few.
Perception is the beliefs, attitudes, and emotions people have about a destination. Strategic marketing campaigns can shape perception and align the audience’s beliefs with the destination’s ideal image. Authenticity again comes into play here—guest experiences must match or exceed the perceived image of a destination to build affinity and loyalty.
Destination Features vs Benefits
The best destination branding transcends function and shifts guests’ focus from features to benefits.
While marketers often highlight a destination’s features, believing they are the key selling points due to the work involved in their development, it’s the benefits these features provide that truly resonate with travelers and attract visitors.
Benefits come in different varieties and potencies. Functional benefits are basic: a roof over your head, food available, amenities, etc. In destination branding the deeper and more resonant benefits are emotional and social.
Emotional benefits resonate with the attitudes and aspirations of travelers, making them feel good about visiting and supporting your destination. They impact how a guest feels about themselves, enhance their lives, or help to make them feel more fulfilled, productive, or joyful.
When visiting a destination, social benefits are more outward-facing, and they say something about the guest and their personality, interests, values, or status. These can be particularly powerful because people want to be seen as aligned with a brand that tells the world something about them.
A great case study of a brand that transcends features to focus guests on benefits is Cedar Lakes Estate. People planning a wedding or group retreat have myriad functional choices for a destination, but Cedar Lakes offers three signature benefits that do an excellent job of nailing the emotional and social benefits of a stay at their rustic luxury upstate escape.
Exclusivity: A guest must reserve the entire property to book an event at Cedar Lakes. Parties enjoy 500 majestic acres, exclusively their own. A limited number of coveted spots are available each season, and they book up for years in advance.
Escape: With countless activities, including movies under the stars, cooking and mixology classes, and miles of hiking trails, Cedar Lakes Estate offers something for everyone in the group to enjoy a memorable, invigorating, and restorative getaway. It’s a rare travel and tourism opportunity to unplug entirely and focus on leisure, making guests feel like kids again at summer camp.
Excellence: Cedar Lakes’ world-class staff and their attention to the most minor details make every trip to the Estate unforgettable. Their culinary philosophy demands they do things the old-fashioned way: slowly, thoughtfully, and entirely from scratch. Guests experience authentic farm-to-table dining as they share dishes prepared with produce from the beautiful on-site garden and ingredients from small, local farms. The exceptional beverage program mirrors the fine quality of the food, with thoughtfully selected drinks curated to complement each season, menu, and the distinctive nature of each event.
Travel+Leisure’s “World’s Best Awards” named Cedar Lakes the #1 resort hotel in New York, and one of the best in the U.S. travel industry. Condé Nast Traveler agrees, and Hotels Above Par recognized them as one of the Top Boutique Hotels in the World, delivering an outstanding blend of comfort and charm.
The distinction between features and benefits is crucial in crafting a destination brand that speaks directly to what customers genuinely care about, moving beyond functional aspects to the true impact on guests’ lives.
Building a Foundational Identity for Compelling Differentiation
In place-making, brand, and destination marketing, differentiation is crucial to stand out in the fiercely competitive tourism industry. In a crowded marketplace where travelers are flooded with options, a unique brand identity can be the critical differentiator that attracts more guests and fosters brand affinity and loyalty. Developing a brand early in the formative stages of planning allows destinations to carve out a distinct brand personality and customer experience that sets a hotel apart. Defining what differentiates a hospitality destination will enable hotels to position themselves as a top option for travelers seeking a memorable, authentic experience—and empower your team to deliver on that promise with every interaction, detail, and decision.
A Distinctive Strategy for Differentiation
Aligning decision-making with your brand’s purpose and North Star is essential to ensure your destination’s branding and visitor experience are cohesive and effective. Defining brand strategy from the outset ensures alignment with vision, mission, audience, and ethos. This alignment fosters authenticity and consistency in the brand’s messaging and positioning, which is crucial for building trust and credibility with guests. When every aspect of an attraction, resort, or hotel’s branding is aligned with its core values and purpose, it sets the stage for a unified and compelling brand story that resonates with visitors (and potential visitors) on a deeper level.
Understanding Your Audience
Genuinely understanding the mindset and desires of your ideal guests empowers your team to create a destination brand that resonates deeply with them. Research and strategy allow destinations to conduct thorough market analysis and gather insights into their target audience’s aspirations, preferences, and behaviors.
Armed with this knowledge, destinations can tailor both branding and destination marketing to speak directly to their targets, crafting messaging and experiences that resonate and connect on an emotional level. Insight into the desired social benefits mentioned above—the things that staying at the hotel says to others about the guest—is equally valuable.
Example: Blackberry Mountain
One of our best case studies of understanding an audience is our destination partner, Blackberry Mountain. The team at Blackberry knows their audience better than anyone in hospitality, from the seasonality of their visits to their favorite wine vintage. Guests, or “friends of the Farm and Mountain,” are typically affluent individuals whose options for luxury travel span the globe.
As part of our work branding the 5,200-acre mountain resort, we helped to create three distinct restaurant concepts based on occasion, from a cozy, casual pub to an elevated fine dining concept. To top it off, literally, we branded a jewel-box bar and restaurant cantilevered around a decommissioned 1940s fire tower at the peak of the Mountain. Guests can sip a glass of wine or enjoy a cocktail and see all the way to North Carolina in one direction and Kentucky in the other. Talk about a unique selling proposition! It is by far our favorite place to have an early breakfast as the sun rises over Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
We help the Mountain stay connected with visitors through seasonal destination marketing. We highlight guest chefs, new menu items, special wine events, and more through digital marketing, content creation, social media, email marketing, and more.
One of our favorite success stories is Blackberry Magazine, a semi-annual print publication mailed out to guests and friends of the Mountain. The magazine shares stories related to Blackberry’s focus on culinary, wellness, and outdoor adventure. The magazine is an unconventional piece of destination marketing that has garnered quite a following, and contributors range from Jimmy Chin and Chris Thile to Antoni Porowski and Brene Brown.
A Strong Brand Foundation
Branding sets the foundation for long-term success by enabling stakeholders and developers to filter and qualify decisions through united criteria. Establishing a strong, unique identity at the beginning of a project ensures informed choices about all aspects of the project, from design and communications to guest experience and operations. The result is a whole, immersive hospitality experience and a launchpad for growth.
Aligning Brand, Design & Experience
Consistency plays a key role in shaping guest experience. By integrating branding into the concept design process from the start, destinations can ensure consistency across all touchpoints, from the architecture and interior/exterior space to the brand’s digital presence. This means that every element of the property, from signage and decor to the website and marketing collateral, reflects a distinctive and differentiated brand experience. Creating cohesion builds customer confidence and reliability and fosters affinity among guests who trust what to expect in every interaction with your destination.
Destination Branding as an Immersive Experience
An immersive brand experience sets a destination apart from the competition. Whether bespoke decor, thoughtful amenities, or engaging soundtracks, a cohesive brand builds a seamless experience for guests at every moment. Enveloping visitors in a unique atmosphere can communicate the brand’s essence in a natural and effortless way. Each element of the destination evokes a feeling that leaves a lasting impression, enhancing your guest’s perception of the brand.
Building Brand Recognition
Consistency also builds strong, clear brand recognition. A cohesive tone of communication, brand visuals, and decor style make it easy for customers to identify and connect with the destination. Owning a consistent and distinctive brand identity means that whether online or in person, guests can quickly recognize the hotel brand and associate it with warm experiences and emotions. This recognition is crucial for destination brands.
Connecting with Guests Emotionally
When you build a brand with consistency, it leads to stronger and more resonant emotional connections, which lie at the heart of every successful destination brand. From booking and check-in to personalized touches in experiences, each interaction holds an opportunity to create moments and memories that connect with visitors on an emotional level.
These connections go beyond mere satisfaction—they build a sense of loyalty and belonging that inspires visitors to adopt the brand, share it, and return again. A cohesive brand reaches far beyond the visual identity and becomes a powerful tool for building lasting relationships.
