Challenge
The Bensaude Group is a huge Portuguese economic group, historically tied to the Azores Archipelago, with businesses that range from the energy sector to a supermarket retail chain, maritime transportation, and more.
Its Tourism division had a series of distinctive hotels, with varied offers spread across different geographical areas – Atlantic islands and Lisbon –, which needed to be grouped under one brand name to become a full hotel collection and obtain market synergies.
Work
Strategy – brand essence. We asked ourselves: what is the one thing the Bensaude Group can say about hospitality that no competitor can claim?
To answer this enigma, Wonder\Why conducted a series of in-depth interviews with key employees, which allowed us to capture the hotel’s brand essence (and competitive advantage) in one sentence: “Azorean hospitality since 1935”.
We found out that no one knows as much about the Azorean way of making guests feel welcome as the Bensaude Group. One of its leaders, Vasco Bensaude, dreamt of opening up the Azores to the international community. He was so committed to this mission that he became the first person to create a Tourism Bureau in the Archipelago; the first person to build a luxury hotel on São Miguel island, Hotel Terra Nostra, in 1935; the first person to build an Azorean golf course, in 1937; and the first person to launch an Azorean airline company, SATA, in 1947, which still operates today, although no longer as part of Bensaude’s portfolio.
Brand Id. Again, we asked ourselves: what if we incorporated the brand essence into the brand ID, so that it would not only unify the Group’s hotels under the same umbrella but also bring a true meaning to it?
This question became the trigger to create the Bensaude Hotels Collection brand ID.
