The Island Gold Coast: A Brand Built for Both Sides of the Stay.
The Island Gold Coast is a boutique hotel in the heart of Surfers Paradise.
With unique venues like Goldie’s, the Rooftop and Pool Deck and beautiful event spaces, the property offered a standout experience — but its brand lacked cohesion and clarity.
The opportunity: reshape the look and feel, build a brand strategy for the existing identity and create a voice that could unify all, from room offers to rooftop parties.
The project
The Island’s personality was there — sunny, social and laid-back, but it needed sharper definition. I created a new brand strategy based around ‘opposite states’: the insight that guests are looking to both relax and play, sometimes in the same moment. This duality became central to the brand’s purpose — to make relaxation more fun. I developed a tone of voice that felt bright, playful and inviting, using the strategy to bring cohesion across a multi-venue, multi-audience offering.
Strategy
Position The Island as a place of contrast and connection — where guests could play, stay and relax. Uncover and respond to what audiences actually want from a getaway: permission to switch off and tempt them to indulge. Build a tone of voice that reflected the hotel's renewed design. Fresh, confident and full of personality, ensuring it could flex across hotel stays, event bookings, weddings, conferences and local activations.
Execution
I developed the tone of voice, wrote core brand copy and rolled out creative across seasonal campaigns, residential conferencing offers, EDMs and the website. The copy focused on clear benefits with a cheerful twist. I also wrote and designed internal brand onboarding tools to bring staff on the journey, making the brand strategy easy to understand and implement at all levels. I worked closely with the in-house marketing team to ensure everything aligned to the new strategy while remaining easy to activate in a fast-paced hospitality environment.
Outcome
The brand now speaks with confidence and consistency across all venues and audiences. From guest experience to group bookings, The Island’s communications reflect its unique mix of playfulness and polish, supporting growth across accommodation, events and hospitality. Internally, the brand strategy has helped align teams and build a shared understanding of purpose, tone and offering.
My role
Brand strategy, tone of voice development, copywriting and creative direction across campaigns, website, hotel offers, events, conferencing materials and internal brand onboarding.
Contribution and learning
This project reinforced the value of having a flexible yet focused brand strategy — one that supports the complexity of a multi-venue property while still feeling cohesive. It also showed how a clear brand purpose can unite internal teams and shape stronger guest experiences, from marketing to front-of-house.