We’ve all seen how a high-end hotel builds its brand and draws in customers with five-star facilities and glitzy interior design. However, enhancing the guest experience with hotel signage can be more effective than you may have realised. And, at Rocket Graphics, we’ve produced and installed signs for more than 30 years, creating elegant signs for some of the planet’s most prestigious hotel brands, both in the UK and worldwide.
The importance of hotel signage
Hotel signage can make the difference between a smooth journey through the various areas of your venue or your guests getting lost somewhere in it, ultimately potentially resulting in a lower a spend from guests during their stay. What’s more, as a marketing tool, signage is cost-effective, low-maintenance and long-lasting.
Here are some of the main functions of signs in hotels, whatever the style, grade, size or location of your venue:
- Guests may arrive disorientated by jet lag or tired from a long journey, or may not have English as a first language. Good, clear wayfinding signage helps them find their way from the restaurant to the gym to the reception or to their own room.
- Directional signage can help whether they are trying to find the spa or other leisure facilities, make their way out to the grounds, locate a particular conference or meeting room or indeed any other part of your site. After all, without this signage, people may not know these facilities are even available.
- Hotel signage can enhance brand identity by incorporating the colours and ethos of your brand, giving consistency across your whole site. Your signage says who you are and sets you apart from the competition.
- This type of hospitality signage also gives your hotel’s décor a highly professional feel. You’ll have the opportunity to incorporate varied textures, typefaces, colours and materials.
Top tips for your hotel signage
Designing hotel signage can initially seem a complicated job. Here are some of the key things to bear in mind when you are devising a strategy for both exterior and interior signage at your venue:
#1 Use high-quality materials
Given that one of the key functions of hotel signage is to do with branding and brand identity, the materials you use in your hospitality signage can say a lot about your establishment. Choose cheap, lower-quality materials and that is the look you’ll create. So think about which ones will match the look and feel you’re aiming for with your hotel brand. Equally, take sustainability into account if this is a particularly important value to you.
Signage clearly has to look fresh and not have any hints of wear and tear. Especially for exterior signage, weather-proof materials will ensure longevity, helping you ensure that your establishment doesn’t look run-down or unkempt.
#2 Don’t forget exterior signage
Before guests even enter your hotel for the first time, they’ll be trying to find it, perhaps while navigating a busy street or trying to locate the car park – and that’s even before making their way into your reception area. That’s why this signage is so vital. And it incorporates more elements than you may have realised, from the exterior signage at the front which displays your hotel’s name and brand to directional signage in the car park and even further away on the street. Bigger hotels often use brown tourist signage to direct people to their establishment – this also promotes your venue and lets potential passing trade know where it is.
#3 Make use of illumination to light up your hotel signage
The right lighting can do a great deal to enhance the effectiveness of signage, from backlit room names or numbers to illuminated exterior signage. Indeed, lighting can enhance any hotel signage, indoors or outside. In fact, if your hotel signage is unlit, it could go completely unnoticed once it’s dark, if other lights in a room are off or, say, a bulb has blown. For that reason, all exterior signage should incorporate lighting, as should room names or numbers. You could choose neon signage, or opt for LED bulbs.
#4 Use wayfinding signage to direct guests to rooms, restaurants and leisure facilities
As mentioned above, wayfinding signage is one of the most important types of signage you’ll come across in a hotel. Clearly, it’s important that any room can be easily found, especially in a larger venue. Ultimately, this kind of directional signage can indirectly help to boost guest spending in your hotel, by directing them to places like the spa or restaurant, where they’re likely to spend money. Equally, they will be in a better frame of mind (and therefore more likely to part with their cash) if they’re not feeling frustrated at having got lost. A guest who can’t find a facility may simply give up trying.
If you host business events and are welcoming delegates who will not be familiar with your site, wayfinding signage is especially important. Time tends to be tight at conferences and the like, and people will need to find their way around smoothly, especially if they arrive late or are staying for a longer event lasting a day or two. Event organisers will expect good, clear signage as a matter of course.
#5 Remember signage needs to be seen from a long way off
Particularly for main hotel-front signs, your exterior signage needs to be visible from a good distance away, to showcase the brand in the best possible light. So do bear this in mind – it’s an aspect of hotel signage that’s often overlooked. Legibility is really important, and your signage is easier to read if you use large, clear typography, minimise visual clutter and incorporate contrasting colours.
#6 Consider window graphics
Typically made with vinyl, window graphics can do wonders to enhance the look and feel of meeting and conference rooms, restaurant doors and glass partitions, not to mention hotel entranceway doors. Use these graphics either for simple branding or directional signage.
#7 Think about colour
Colour communicates brand values subtly, Warm colours imply a vibrant welcome, cooler shades indicate quality and relaxation, and black and white can suggest high-end elegance. People take in these colours and subconsciously associate them with your brand.
Talk to our team about hotel signage today
Rocket Graphics is a large-format printing firm based in Watford, just outside London, but we cover all of the UK, offering signage production and graphic installation for myriad industries. We’ve worked on a lot of hotel signage for household-name brands, as well as hospitality suites at some of the country’s biggest sporting stadia.
We offer a complete hotel signage production and installation service including second-to-none after-care. Talk to us whether you want backlit signage, exterior totem signs or anything else, from a conference room overhaul to bar and restaurant or hospitality signage. We create all manner of exterior and interior signage, including high-quality, hard-wearing acrylic signs.
So we know a thing or two about enhancing the guest experience with hotel signage! Get in touch today for an informal, free and no-obligation chat about what we could do for your hospitality brand.