Designing Hotel and Hospitality Brochures - Layout Tips and Examples

Industry & Career
1

Hospitality design is one of those categories where you either nail the atmosphere or you don’t. There’s very little middle ground.

What I’ve learned working on hotel and hospitality brochures specifically:

White space is not optional. Every hotel wants to cram amenity icons and room specs but the luxury feeling comes from what you don’t say. I now have a rule: one key message per spread.

Photography quality makes or breaks the layout. No amount of typography skill compensates for mediocre room photography. If the client hasn’t budgeted for a proper shoot, the brochure will not look premium.

Typography hierarchy matters more than the font choice. Guests scan. They’re not reading. Lead with experience, follow with detail.

For layout: horizontal spreads work better than single pages for hospitality. The landscape format echoes the physical space - rooms, views, terraces.

Anyone else in this vertical? Curious if boutique hotel clients behave differently from chain properties. My experience is boutiques care more about the feel, chains care more about spec accuracy.

2

The photography point cannot be overstated. I’ve turned down hospitality projects when the image library was unusable. Better to not take the brief than to produce work that looks like the client’s budget rather than the property’s quality.

3

Boutique vs chain is a completely different client dynamic in my experience. Boutiques give more creative latitude but change their minds more. Chains have rigid brand guidelines but the brief is clearer.