How One Upscale Australian Hotel Group Used the Crisis to Rethink Everything
Photo Credit: A view from a king suite at View Hotels Sydney Harbourview property in Sydney, Australia. The upscale independent hotel chain refreshed its brand and tech stack despite the pandemic. View Hotels
Skift Take
"A fashion executive and a tech geek walk into a hotel bar ..." But instead of being the start of a bad joke, this is the start of a good story about creativity during a crisis.
View Hotels, an upscale, independent hotel brand in Australia, embarked on an overhaul in the spring of 2019. But as it turns out a natural disaster and then a global pandemic forced the company's leaders to be creative with fewer resources than initially planned.
View Hotels only has three properties. Yet the company's story represents the bigger decisions facing countless other hoteliers worldwide — and how perseverance is a key virtue in brand and tech revamps.
View's properties in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne confronted a challenge that many other urban hotels also did in that guest cancellations disproportionately hit them compared to drive-to properties in more open, airy environments.
"Not only are we faced with a global pandemic, but before that, we were faced with bushfires in Australia," said Margaret Huerta, a creative director overseeing View Hotels' rebranding campaign. "From the onset, everything was stacked against us. If it could go wrong, it went wrong."
