Luxury Branding Luxury Branding redefines Corinthia Hotels’ brand promise to support global expansionIn early 2023, Corinthia Hotels engaged Luxury Branding to spearhead its transformation from a respected operator to a leading ultra-luxury brand, setting the stage for a new era of 'Properly Inventive' hospitality as it prepares for ambitious global growth.

Corinthia Hotels

Brand-led transformation

In early 2023, Corinthia Hotels engaged Luxury Branding to spearhead its transformation from a respected operator to a leading ultra-luxury brand, setting the stage for a new era of ‘Properly Inventive’ hospitality as it prepares for ambitious global growth.

Case Study

Master Brand

Corinthia Hotels, a family-owned hospitality group, has embarked on an exciting phase of international expansion. Between 2024 and 2025, eight new, ultra-luxury properties will open in prestigious locations, including New York, Rome, Brussels and the Maldives. In preparation for this next phase of its development, the company recognised its need for a comprehensive brand transformation and enlisted Luxury Branding to lead the initiative.

Our mission was threefold: elevate Corinthia’s market positioning, ensure a consistently differentiated guest experience across its growing global portfolio, and establish a unified quality standard of marketing and communications to underpin the group’s promising future.

Our research into the evolving luxury travel landscape revealed a growing demand for uplifting, enriching and caring experiences—a trend intensified by recent global turbulence. A critical insight emerged: affluent millennials, now ready to transition from lifestyle hotels to true luxury, seek experiences that retain the energy and innovation they value while blending this with personalised care and attention. This presented a unique opportunity for Corinthia.

To capture the imaginations of this emerging market, we developed Corinthia’s new brand positioning: ‘Grand Boutique’. This concept targets a community we describe in terms of Richard Florida’s ‘Creative Class’—discerning professionals seeking ‘Refined Stimulation’. Grand Boutique combines a grand hotel’s physical elegance with a boutique operator’s vibrant personality, creating a distinctive character that sets Corinthia apart from traditional luxury and trendy lifestyle brands.

Building on the new positioning, we articulated Corinthia’s brand promise: to deliver ‘Properly Inventive’ hospitality. This approach combines genuine comfort and care with creative, characterful touches that captivate and inspire the Corinthia community.

We created a comprehensive, beautifully designed hardback brand book to encapsulate this strategic work. This guide crystallises Corinthia’s new global positioning and provides a clear vision by which to steer the group’s international expansion.

Visual Identity

To convey Corinthia’s new brand positioning and promise, we developed a subtle yet impactful evolution of the master brand’s visual identity. The previous design—characterised by flat, clinical elements and dated photography—did not capture the vibrancy or personality of the ‘Grand Boutique’ positioning. While it adhered to formality, it lacked creativity and flair.

We transformed the brand’s visual language into a richer, multi-layered vocabulary, balancing elegance with vitality. The logotype underwent a light modernisation, refining its strokes and terminals for added gravitas while preserving its core recognisability. We also emancipated the emblem from its previous lockup with the wordmark, allowing it to be used more freely across different touchpoints.

The typography was refreshed with the introduction of IvyOra as the primary typeface, blending historical charm with a modern touch through its open, elegant forms. GT America Extended, used in all caps, provided a versatile contrast to IvyOra’s serifs. The new colour palette, ‘Hues of Home,’ was inspired by Malta’s natural elements and ingredients, incorporating warm shades of honey, clay, and limestone to replace the previously formal and cold palette.

Finally, we created a master brand pattern inspired by Corinthia’s original capital emblem, adding a layer of heritage and visual interest to the brand’s toolkit

Photographic Direction

As an integral element of the brand’s expanded visual language, we introduced a refined photographic direction encompassing four key content streams: destination, detail, people and product.

‘Living Landscapes’ captures the vibrancy of each destination, while ‘Candid Moments’ features unposed, authentic portraits that reflect Corinthia’s core values of creativity, connection and openness. Property imagery now adopts an ‘Impressively Inviting’ style, blending luxury with warmth, while ‘Delightfully Undone’ details evoke an atmosphere of inviting, lived-in comfort.

During the summer of 2024, Luxury Branding acted as executive producer and art director for Corinthia’s product and details shoots at its flagship London hotel, bringing this vision to life for the first time.

Property Positionings

We have devised bespoke positioning frameworks for five of its flagship properties to support Corinthia Hotels’ evolution from a respected operator with a singular luxury asset into a leading ultra-luxury brand.

This strategic initiative encompassed three properties under development, scheduled to open in 2025 in Brussels, Rome and Bucharest; the brand’s flagship hotel in London, currently the sole ultra-luxury property in the portfolio; and the founding property in Malta.

To define each property’s unique positioning, we conducted immersions, strategic insights gathering and stakeholder interviews, identifying distinct differentiators and crafting tailored proposition statements. Each statement embodies the master brand’s ‘Grand Boutique’ positioning while remaining inspirational, sustainable and specific to its location.

Our framework focuses on three critical attributes of the guest experience: Atmosphere (the ambience created by and within the property), Attitude (the spirit of its people), and Amenities (the distinctive offerings of the product itself). We identified three unique selling points for each attribute that collectively support a single, defining statement.

This approach ensures each Corinthia property’s cohesive yet distinctive identity is aligned with the overarching brand vision. By tailoring the ‘Grand Boutique’ concept to each unique setting, we’ve developed for Corinthia a framework that allows each property to shine individually while contributing to the strength of the master brand.

Property Prints

To visualise each hotel’s distinct interpretation of the Corinthia master brand, we created the concept of Property Prints for five hotels. These prints infuse the brand’s visual identity with property-specific elements from various artistic media—painting, sculpture, floristry, and illustration. For each hotel, we commissioned a local creative to provide their interpretation of its personality and identity. The resulting artwork is applied to select pieces of property collateral, adding a bespoke touch—such as the underside of a classic black umbrella, revealing a splash of inventiveness.

We worked with renowned local floral artist Daniel Ost for Corinthia Brussels to create a stunning flower carpet inspired by the hotel’s history and new positioning. This design was transformed into 2D artwork through photography, providing the hotel with a vibrant expression of its identity, used alongside the master brand for an exclusive, location-specific element.

Communications

Internal Engagement

To effectively disseminate the new positioning throughout Corinthia and ensure its adoption, we created a series of five engaging films in collaboration with then-CEO Simon Naudi. Four films explored the nuances of the new positioning, while the fifth introduced the brand’s refreshed visual identity.

To maximise engagement and comprehension, we implemented an online quiz that tested employees’ understanding of the new brand elements. With rewards for top performers, this interactive approach helped embed the ‘Properly Inventive’ ethos across the organisation.

Digital Evolution

Working with the digital agency 26, we brought Corinthia’s new visual identity to life online. The redesigned website seamlessly integrates the brand’s updated design principles—typography, colour palette, imagery and layout—while prioritising functionality and user experience.

We also produced a series of homepage films to contribute dynamic visual appeal to the main landing pages, showcasing the master brand and all properties. This revitalised digital presence marks a significant milestone in Corinthia’s brand evolution, embodying the ‘Grand Boutique’ positioning in the digital realm.

New Openings Showcase

To herald Corinthia’s exciting global expansion, we created a captivating short film highlighting the group’s upcoming openings in Rome, New York, Brussels and Bucharest. This visual narrative artfully blends existing original and curated stock footage, presenting each location through a ‘Properly Inventive’ lens.

The film introduces these prestigious new properties and showcases Corinthia’s refreshed visual direction. By capturing the essence of each city with a distinctive flair, the video embodies the new brand positioning and sets the tone for Corinthia’s growing global presence.

ILTM Cannes 2023: Grand Boutique in Action

We orchestrated a series of impactful activations to enhance Corinthia’s presence at the prestigious International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) in Cannes in December 2023. These efforts announced new openings in Rome, New York, Brussels and Bucharest, while reaffirming Corinthia’s leadership in luxury hospitality.

Within Le Palais des Festivals, banners highlighted Corinthia’s global expansion.

The centrepiece of the campaign was a vintage London bus, branded in Corinthia’s colours, driving up and down the Croisette. Custom panels and creative cutouts promoted new destinations, emphasising the brand’s expanding footprint.

This bold campaign drew attention from industry leaders, combining classic elegance with innovation, and showcasing Corinthia’s unique blend of tradition and modernity.

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