Europe's Hip 25hours Hotels Injects Storytelling Into Business Travel

One of the most creative small hotel brands in Europe doesn’t use a lot of sophisticated apps, video walls or smart TVs to share info about interesting people, places and events in the hotels' local destinations. It puts out a newspaper instead. This year, Hamburg-based 25hours Hotels hired the Berlin-based Freunde von Freunden media company to produce its Companion in-room newspaper. Incorporating a smart low-fi layout, the tabloid profiles creative people working in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna and Zurich where the seven 25hours Hotels are located. That’s what 25hours Hotels does best—telling unique stories in a user-friendly way. In terms of hotel product, there’s no real consistency across the portfolio's physical assets or interior design, because each property's storyline is developed to mesh with a specific neighborhood's history and culture. The brand's unofficial tagline is: "You know one, you know none." The brand consistency, rather, revolves around four simple branding bullet points: Come as you are Real place, real people Let’s spend the night together Almost home “‘Come as you are’ I think is the most important one because we don't care if you’re a gay couple, straight couple, businessman in a suit, businessman without a suit, or family,” says Felix Sigel, sales/marketing manager. “'Real place, real people' is kind of self-explanatory, b