Hotel Tauernhof branding
Hospitality brands have a peculiar relationship with place. They need enough locality to make the destination matter, but push too hard and the whole thing becomes theater. Alpine hotels are especially vulnerable. There are only so many antlers, mountain silhouettes and acres of reclaimed timber a traveler can endure before Austria starts looking suspiciously like Colorado.
Solid & Bold's work for Hotel Tauernhof Großarl finds a smarter balance. Following a strategic realignment and substantial renovation, the hotel reopened in 2021 with an identity built around its home in Großarl, Austria. The work reaches across brand design, editorial, digital, photography and signage, giving the hotel a system substantial enough to operate rather than simply advertise.
The larch cone at the center of the identity is a particularly good choice. Larch trees are common to Großarl, traditionally used as building material in the Alps and change dramatically with the seasons. Solid & Bold turned the cone into a simple graphic signet, then paired it with contemporary interpretations of symbols drawn from traditional regional clothing. The result feels unmistakably connected to its surroundings without becoming a souvenir-shop version of Austrian culture.
That same thinking carries beautifully into the physical experience. Colored natural papers and letterpress give printed pieces weight and texture, while larch appears again in the signage alongside black lettering, color coding, steel and neon. The signage deservedly received second place in the 2022 Salzburg State Prize. More importantly, the materials aren't being selected because somebody assembled a tasteful mood board. They come from the same story.
Restaurants could learn something here. We routinely see regional concepts reach immediately for the visual clichés associated with their cuisine. Italian becomes red checks and tomatoes. Mexican becomes papel picado and agave. Southern becomes distressed wood and hand-painted signs. Tauernhof demonstrates how much richer locality becomes when designers investigate the place rather than its stereotypes.
The photography strengthens that idea further. Solid & Bold created a proprietary library using a documentary approach instead of relying on the regional tourism imagery available to every competing hotel. That's a deceptively important brand decision. A destination hotel selling somebody else's photographs of the destination is already surrendering part of its identity. Tauernhof gets to show Großarl through its own eyes.
There are moments where the system becomes a little too eager to be friendly. The scribbled illustrations bring accessibility, although their looseness occasionally feels less distinctive than the larch symbol, typography, materials and signage surrounding them. I'd be tempted to trust those stronger elements more and make the illustration system earn its appearances.
Still, the larger lesson survives beautifully. Tauernhof modernized without severing the connection to where it came from. That's harder than making something fashionable. Trends can be imported from anywhere. Place has to be discovered, understood and translated.
The best hospitality brands leave you with some sense that they couldn't have been created anywhere else. Tauernhof gets remarkably close.
Credits
Agency: Solid & Bold
Design Team: Stefanie Aunitz — Graphic Design & Illustration; Anna Kronthaler — Graphic Design & Illustration; Dominik Langegger — Project Management, Creative & Art Direction, Illustration & UX; Saskia Ritter-Höntzsch — Content Strategy, Social Media & Editing; Serge Ritter-Höntzsch — Creative Direction & Signage; Matthias Tildach — Graphic Design, Photography & Signage. Additional collaborators included petrichor on brand strategy, Stephan Riefer on copy, WG3 on interior design and architecture, BlueChip on web development, and Bianca Hochenauer and Valerie Maltseva on photography.
Location: Salzburg, Austria.
