Conrad Hotel Branding & Design

Page from the Conrad Hotel Brand Standards Manual

A Space for Travelers

After providing two successful Hotel Designs for Starwood in 2006, the CEO of W Hotels Ross Klein moved to LA to work for Hilton, overseeing the re-branding of the Conrad Hotel and developing a competitive brand to the newly formed Ace Hotel Group. Ross Klein asked Clodagh's Hospitality Design Team to work exclusively on his new 'Hotel Branding' projects that had to go to market in less than a year to launch at a Hospitality Conference in Berlin.

The Design:

The Conrad Hotel Brand is marketed towards the International Business Traveller to suit their personal needs and desires. Taking the existing Conrad Properties into account, gave context on how to re-imagine the current and future requirements of a modern-day traveller. The Design Studio generated competing personas for our potential guests to better serve their diverse needs.

'Tactility and Tech' was a duality that we kept in the forefront of our minds while designing into 'the prototype hotel' that would give depth to the Brand Standards Manual we were developing. What resulted from the challenge were in-depth discussions with the Design Team and Clients on how a Hotel really needed to function in an urban environment that now relied on the ease of technology instead of time-worn traditions.

Epilogue

After the 2008 global recession put a halt to most Hospitality Projects at that time, these Design Standards are just now being evoked in renovation projects. The first Conrad Hotel that opened utilizing the new 'Brand Standards' was in 2016 in Downtown New York at Brookfield Place by KPF Architects and Harvard Professor Monica Ponce de Leon.

For more Imagery from the Design Process, Please open the PDF Link Below.

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Team:

Clodagh Design Studio

Hotel Branding Team: Rachel Wood Massey, Emily VanderVeen & Jennifer di Leonardi