When location is both the challenge and the answer

Marlin had built its business on Marlin Apartments – aparthotels in the UK, professional, functional, well-suited to mid-market business travel. The new Dublin property triggered a wider strategic question. It was the first venture outside the UK. And it was a full hotel rather than an aparthotel – a new category for the group. The existing Marlin Apartments brand wouldn’t carry the new format, and creating a second standalone brand alongside it would fragment what the group had built.

The answer was a new brand architecture. Replace the existing ‘Marlin Apartments’ with a flexible Marlin master brand that could accommodate aparthotels, hotels and any future formats without diluting any of them. Marlin Hotel Dublin would be the first expression of the new structure.

The Dublin location had a particular story. Bow Lane sits two minutes from Grafton Street and St Stephen’s Green – central by any measure. But it was ‘hidden’ behind the Stephen’s Green Centre, adjacent to less polished environs, and not visible from a main thoroughfare. A passer-by could walk by without noticing it.

A new category, a new market, and a great location albeit with some downsides. The brand had to do meaningful work.

I worked with Slater as their strategic partner.

The strategic insight – seeing ‘tucked away’ as a virtue, not a flaw

The Marlin had two location issues. It was unknown. And what surrounded it wasn’t all a polished cityscape.

Most hotel brands in the same position would fight one or both – build awareness around being there, suggest the area was up-and-coming, find a way to mention the proximity without dwelling on the surroundings. That approach treats the location as a deficit to overcome.

The reframe came from the other direction. The hotel’s strengths – the co-working styled interior, the rooms, the food, incredible proximity to Grafton Street and Stephen’s Green – meaningfully outweighed the visibility and adjacency issues. This hotel isn’t a compromise. It’s a find.

That changes the proposition. The hotel becomes the kind of place an insider-visitor seeks out, recommends quietly, returns to. The visibility problem stops being a problem and starts being part of why the experience feels different to staying somewhere obvious.

‘Tucked away at the heart of things’ became the central idea. Central enough to walk to everything. Tucked away enough to feel like a discovery.

‘Tucked away’ does extra work. The phrase carries the geographic meaning – hidden, sought out, and found – but to be tucked away carries a cosy comfort.

1. FROM: A new hotel in a central but less visible location, in less polished surroundings, with no brand recognition outside the UK aparthotel category.
2. VIA: A hotel a visitor has to look for – is a hotel that rewards you for looking.
3. TO: A find. Central but tucked away. For visitors who want to discover where they stay rather than be processed through it.

Finding the articulation

The brand idea needed two pieces of work – a positioning that anchored the strategic insight, and a tagline that carried it into everyday language.

The positioning: Tucked away at the heart of things. Central Dublin, intimately scaled, for the visitor who wants to find their hotel rather than be sold one.

The tagline: Don’t just stay, live!

‘You are here’ is map language – the locator phrase a visitor recognises from every city map and every airport. It places the visitor at the heart of Dublin, with a knowing nod to the tucked-away quality. Subtle connotation can be played out in copy (here for a good time, here to stay, and the more Zen idea of being ‘here’).

‘Don’t just stay, live!’ invites a different kind of relationship with the hotel – not a place to sleep between sights, but a place to be at the heart of the city. It fits a (post)modern format that mixes work, rest, food and meeting under the same roof.

The hospitality sub-brand: Here.

The food and drink offer needed its own identity – distinct enough to feel like a destination in its own right, connected enough to belong to the hotel. The answer was a single word: Here.

‘Here’ threads back to ‘You are here’ as the central brand idea. It also stands alone as a single-word restaurant brand – immediate, unpretentious, in keeping with the hotel’s register. A guest staying at Marlin eats at Here. A Dubliner who’s never stayed can drop in for a drink Here.

Making it real

The visual identity, graphic design and signage came through Slater – contemporary, sharable, suited to the hotel’s interior register without overpowering it.

Signage and wayfinding inside the building carried the ‘You are here’ idea – the map-language thread running into the lived experience of the property. Menus, collateral and in-room communications all drew on the same simple vocabulary, in keeping with a brand that doesn’t over-explain itself.

Why it works

The reframe holds because it’s honest. The Marlin really is tucked away. The neighbourhood is real and adjacent the best of Dublin. The brand positions the visitor as someone who chooses these things over the obvious alternatives.

This is a different value proposition than the average city-centre hotel. Not ‘stay where everyone stays’, but ‘stay somewhere you found’. People talk about Marlin the way they talk about a restaurant they discovered.

For Marlin Group, the case extends the brand’s range – giving the group a different proposition to play in different markets without diluting the original. For the Marlin Group, the architecture does longer-term work. The aparthotel business stays inside the Marlin master brand rather than belonging to 'Marlin Apartments' alone. Marlin Hotel Dublin extends what 'Marlin' can signify, without resetting the group’s history. Future formats – wherever they fall on the spectrum from apartment to full hotel – have a platform for launch.

• The challenge: Launch the Marlin Group’s first international hotel and first non-aparthotel, in a central but unexpected Dublin location  
• The insight: A hotel a visitor has to look for is a hotel that rewards looking – the location’s downsides contain the proposition
• The articulation: Marlin | You are here | Don’t just stay, live!
• The approach: Position the hotel as a find in Dublin. Sub-brand ‘Here’ for the F&B offer, carrying the core brand idea into the lived experience. 
• Partnership: Garrett Reil as brand consultant to Slater Design. Graphic design and signage designed by Sinead MacAleer, assisted by Kelan Ó Nualláin.

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