Hotelbreak

Your time, enjoy

what matters

Being born in the middle of a pandemic leaves a mark. You have to be either completely mad — or able to spot an exceptionally clear business opportunity — to leave a good job in one of the country’s most important hotel groups and launch a tourism start-up precisely when the world was shutting itself indoors, not going out or travelling for months.

Cristian Alcoba and Maxime Renaudin, founders of Hotelbreak, saw it with absolute clarity. They had identified a competitive opportunity in the underuse and low performance of hotel facilities and common areas. Experts in the sector, and at a time when hotels were experiencing minimal or zero occupancy, they conceived Hotelbreak.

Hotelbreak also restored hotels as spaces for the social life of the city or community, removing the barriers between local residents and this type of leisure establishment. It allowed people to access and get to know the hotels in the places where they live and the experiences they offer — the trendiest spots or those most aligned with their lifestyle — and to do so from the perspective and sense of enjoyment usually reserved for tourists.

In its first three years, Hotelbreak had focused on strengthening its relationship with its B2B client: the hoteliers who provide the spaces they commercialise, and the investors who had supported them during this initial phase. In that regard, it was a solid and well-developed brand.

However, in the midst of growth and international expansion, the need emerged to build and strengthen the relationship with the end customer, a relationship that until then had been approached mainly from a tactical, performance-driven perspective. In this new phase, the brand must communicate its essence more clearly and powerfully, establishing its own identity and a structured, cohesive global definition that can be understood in different markets and that, beyond the product and service, helps us recognise it, differentiate it and give it relevance in comparison with its international competitors.

It must be capable of focusing on the end customer (B2C) to grow its critical mass and market penetration in the new regions it enters, thereby multiplying the company’s value in the eyes of investors — all without neglecting the hotel sector (B2B) and existing investors.

This value proposition will also structure and unify the commercial narrative for the sales and marketing teams, a narrative that until now had not been defined in a single, coherent way.

At Mandarina Brand Society, we analysed the characteristics of Hotelbreak, the market and emerging trends in order to find a guiding thread that would help us define a unique, solid and clear brand, relevant and credible — to uncover why Hotelbreak exists, what it does and how it does it.

Among most competitors we identified value propositions aimed at a generic “leisure product consumer”, with collections of offers that were often unappealing and overwhelming due to the sheer number of references, sometimes even leading to saturation and rejection. There was a clear window of opportunity for differentiation.

We decided to focus on understanding the concerns of Hotelbreak’s main customer, a clearly female audience. They are the ones who book, and they wanted to see themselves reflected: cool mothers, urban women who want to handle all areas of their lives and excel in them. Women who want to stay up to date and be a point of reference within their social circles. Loyal users and content creators on Instagram, they embrace the slow-life movement as a lifestyle, favour Boho chic fashion and love trends.

On the other hand, there are foreign residents (a growing customer profile in major cities such as Madrid, Barcelona or Paris) with a trendy attitude, eager to integrate, socialise and discover rooftops, cool spots and the places where locals have fun.

LGTBIQA+ communities, digital nomads, and business travellers with purchasing power — people with a strong connection to the city — also emerged as highly interesting audiences for driving recurring use of the Hotelbreak product. These are two target profiles that are more indulgent, “self-consumers” who look for self-care and everyday treats.

In that context, we decided to give Hotelbreak a renewed aspirational dimension, shifting the spotlight to a consumer who wants to take control of their own self-care and who sees Hotelbreak’s experiences as an opportunity to pause the daily stress. This is a unique concept and approach within its segment, making the brand stand out by offering experiences that act as a break in the everyday routine — a release valve for daily pressure, an exercise in awareness and freedom. A form of empowerment that encourages people to make decisions about the quality of their time and how they want to enjoy it — alone, with a partner, with friends or while meeting new like-minded people. A healing alternative to daily burnout. A brand that understands leisure as a window to freedom, as a space in which to feel alive and express one’s true nature, where we can choose how we want to enjoy it at any moment.

We therefore positioned the brand as a simple tool that enables these decisions born from a desire for freedom, offering the possibility to socialise and discover the cool spots in the cities where users live — permanently or temporarily — with whomever they want, however they want. We shifted the focus from describing the product to empowering the voice that narrates it.

We brought that same attitude to the categorisation and segmentation of the offer, encouraging action and direct booking through a clear identity and an offer segmented according to the desires and emotional state of the end customer. As a result, searches on the platform are defined by impulses and emotional connections (resting, spending time with family, practising sports, self-care) rather than by product type.

We developed its visual system around an isotype that distils Hotelbreak’s main message into a single element: “a parenthesis in your everyday life.” A space of time dedicated to yourself or to those you enjoy most. Stepping away from obligations and embracing free time by breaking out of routine.

The chromatic selection of the visual identity clearly connects with the brand’s personality and the values it conveys.

Yellow as the primary colour and mauve as the secondary, applied in a soft, non-strident tone, evoke dynamism, happiness, energy and optimism in the consumer’s mind — a gentle, on-trend palette that speaks to the friendly side of the brand, the inspiring friend who advises you and gives you that final push to make the decision you’ve been postponing for so long, that “you deserve it”.

We added a green that speaks of freshness, health and wellbeing — the point of balance between mind and heart that we all need.

Determination, optimism, honesty, simplicity, and the strength and resilience characteristic of a brand born during one of the most significant crises in history are reflected in its tone of voice. The copy conveys the essence of the brand and its product in very few words. Clear messages that encourage putting oneself first and taking action, supported by a modern, laid-back typeface such as Tobias and the use of varying font weights to emphasise words or phrases.

An extraordinary, vibrant, trustworthy, approachable and creative brand that embarks on a process of international expansion with the guarantee of a proposition that resonates universally, empowers its community, and prepares its evolution for potential future connections with socialisation platforms, friends’ plans, and more — opportunities that would exponentially increase its reach, penetration and commercial results.