Big box hospitality brands or DIY branding: Is there a clear winner?

The Perks of Big Branding

Let’s start with the positives. Partnering with a global hotel brand can open valuable doors. You gain access to established sales channels, trusted loyalty programs, and powerful marketing engines with international reach. That’s no small advantage—especially during your resort’s launch and ramp-up period, when awareness and early bookings are critical.

For many travelers, especially frequent flyers and corporate guests, booking within a familiar brand offers comfort, confidence, and the allure of earning points. That kind of consumer trust can translate directly into higher occupancy, better ADRs, and smoother financing conversations.

Big brands can also help attract experienced staff, established vendors, and a built-in guest base. In the right circumstances, they can be a real asset.

The Hidden Costs

But those advantages come at a price—and not just the fees and brand standards. Many developers are surprised to discover that some hotel brands require you to procure everything through their approved channels. From furniture and lighting to cutlery and pool towels, you may be locked into a purchasing system that limits your options, drives up costs, and makes it difficult to source locally or bring a unique design vision to life.

That procurement model can be particularly frustrating for developers who care about design, sustainability, or regional authenticity. It can also create inefficiencies in remote locations where shipping and lead times are already a challenge.

And then there’s the bigger question: what happens if the brand no longer exists in 10 years?

We ask this often, because it matters. If your property has been calibrated to a brand’s exact standards—from room sizes and amenity layouts to back-of-house workflows—it becomes much harder to pivot. A resort should be designed with resilience in mind, not dependency. Market preferences change. Brands remerge, reflag, or disappear. Your design should outlast them all.

The Boutique Shift

We’re also seeing a real shift in traveler expectations. Guests are increasingly skeptical of cookie-cutter consistency. The “one-size-fits-all” resort experience is losing ground to something more local, more thoughtful, and more design-driven.

Today’s traveler is looking for something that feels personal. Unique. Rooted in its location. And they’re increasingly aware that a brand name doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality—just familiarity. That’s why many developers are exploring self-branding or working with boutique hotel partners that allow for more creative control and a stronger sense of place.

Brand Early, Brand Intentionally

If you are going to build a brand—or partner with one—do it early. Too often, branding agencies are brought in after the architecture is already done, tasked with retrofitting an identity onto a finished design. That rarely works.

At Dune, we love working with branding partners from the very beginning of a project. When the brand vision is aligned with the design team from day one, the result is cohesive, compelling, and market-responsive. The brand framework becomes a strategic design tool—not just a marketing layer slapped on top.

Final Thought: Design That Outlasts Logos

Resort branding can be powerful. But like any tool, it needs to be used wisely. The best developments are designed to stand on their own—brand or no brand. If the name over the door changes, the architecture, experience, and value should remain intact.

So before you commit to a flag, ask the hard questions. Will this brand support your vision—or constrain it? Can your design adapt if the market shifts? And is the label doing the heavy lifting, or is your resort strong enough to speak for itself?

Because in the end, branding should elevate your project—not define it.