Waxholms Hotell
In the beginning of 2025, Waxholm Hotel underwent significant renovations to elevate the guest experience. To capture this new era in the hotel's century-long history, the owners hired Zero Folks to function as their external marketing department. Social media, website, visual identity and more. This 6-month project was one of our most rewarding and extensive undertakings to date, and the numbers speak for themselves.
Goals
The goals were simple
- Develop a visual identity that blends the brand's bold and bright future with its rich history
- Support and maintain the social media initiatives through high-quality content and community engagement
- Build a website that captures the hotel vision and increases reach
...but as with any legacy brand with more than 100 years of history, it's not as simple as pressing "go".
Considerations
The hotel is located in Vaxholm - a small pictoresque town at the edge of the Stockholm archipelago. This place offers both stunning views as well as a glimpse of what Sweden looked like in the late 1800s. And while getting there is easy by car, bus or boat, it’s still 1 hour away from Stockholm city. This poses certain challenges for a hotel that wants to appeal to locals and tourists while also competing with more central options.
Summer tourists has also been what kept this hotel afloat for so many decades, but it will not keep the business growing. There offerings has to attract customers year-round. As the marketing department, this meant effectively strategizing around the key demographics that can grow with the hotel troughout the winter season.
Finally, the new owners had a new bold vision for the hotel: “Party, joy and warmth.” Balancing a century-long legacy with an edgy and ecclectic aesthetic felt a bit like mixing oil and water. But we’re always up for a challenge!
Strategy
The visual identity work began with a new logo. The hotel’s architect, Erik Lallerstedt, was inspired by jugend style, also known as the Scandinavian proxy to art noveau. After exploring about 100 ways to design the letter W, we landed on a design that we believe fuses tradition with edge in a thoughtful manner.
The W brandmark was then accompanied by a classic Italian art deco font, Mostra Nuova, with wide letterspacing for readibility in small print. Additionally, the typography component of the brand guide was completed with the Cabinet Grotesk family to bring some friendliness and play into the mix.
Beyond website and branding, Zero Folks also produced content for their social media. This included motion graphics, posters, photos and videos across all channels. Aside from the general goals of gaining more followers, creating branding consistency, maintaining posting frequency and bringing some lightheartedness into the feed was key for the hotel owners.
Delivery
At the end of our engagement with the hotel, Zero Folks has successfully produced the following:
- A brand identity, complete with brandmark, logotype, typography, color palette and formatting guidelines
- A website that captures the brand and increased reach
- InDesign templates for all of their menus
- Complimentary logos for sub-brands such as La Cambusa, Skajbar, Kajbar, Svajbar, and more.
- A media bank of more than 1000+ photos and videos
As of October 2025, Waxholms Hotell uses another website to accommodate the tech stack of their current marketing team.
