ABOUT

CHALLENGE:
The property sat in one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on the planet — a rare tropical fiord on the shores of Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica, home to species found nowhere else on Earth. And yet, it was communicating like any other eco-lodge: green palette, sustainability claims, and a list of activities that failed to convey the extraordinary rarity of what guests were actually stepping into.

The target audience for this kind of destination is not the casual ecotourist. It is the hardcore expedition traveller — the person who pays NatGeo Expeditions for an Antarctic cruise, or flies to Botswana to witness the migration. This traveller demands uniqueness, scientific credibility, and access to the genuinely irreplaceable. The brand as it stood could not speak to that person. It needed a complete repositioning — not as a hotel with a garden, but as a gateway to one of the world's last truly intact marine and rainforest biomes.

IDEA:
Reframe the entire value proposition with a single conceptual shift: the hotel does not contain the experience — the biome does. The hotel is simply the most beautiful way to access it. This repositioning — "It's not an Ecological Hotel. It's a Biome with a Hotel" — changes everything: the tone, the pricing rationale, the target, the content strategy, and the emotional promise.

The brand name, OMRANÁ, was inspired by the Golfo Dulce Poison Dart Frog — an endemic species found exclusively in the forested streams of the property and its surrounding reserve. Vivid, jewel-like, critically rare, and utterly unforgettable: the frog is the perfect symbol for everything OMRANÁ represents. It gives the brand an identity rooted in the land itself — not in generic nature imagery, but in a single, irreplaceable creature that tells the whole story.

The experience packages were named Jewels — because every encounter at OMRANÁ is a gem: rare, precious, and impossible to replicate elsewhere.

Strategic asset — one of only three tropical fiords on Earth.
Golfo Dulce is the largest and most biodiverse of the world's three tropical fiords — alongside Saco do Mamangua in Brazil and Tufi in Papua New Guinea. It's the primary breeding ground for humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins, hammerhead and tiger sharks in the Eastern Pacific. This is not a feature. It is the entire argument.

-Jewels of the Marine Habitat
Whale & dolphin conservation expeditions. Shark research dives. Citizen science participation.
-Jewels of the Rainforest
Dart frog tracking. Herpetofauna surveys. Conservation of GD endemic amphibians & reptiles.
-Jewels of the Birdlife
Yellow-billed cotinga tracking. Mangrove birding. Conservation of endemic forest species.

Logo inspiration:
Golfo Dulce Poison Dart Frog
Endemic. Found only in GD forest streams. Critically vulnerable. The soul of OMRANÁ.

-Endemic bird
Yellow-billed Cotinga
Endangered. Found only in GD mangroves. Anchor of the Birdlife package.
-Marine anchor
Humpback Whales & Coastal Dolphins
Primary breeding ground in Eastern Pacific. Year-round presence in Golfo Dulce.
-Apex predators
Hammerhead & Tiger Sharks
Nursery area for juvenile sharks. Key species in marine conservation programme.

MY CONTRIBUTION - CREATIVE DIRECTOR
As Creative Director, I built the OMRANÁ identity from the ground up — brand name, logo inspiration, strategic positioning, experience architecture, and full communications system.
This is my vision:
-Naming & logo concept: I named the brand OMRANÁ drawing from the sonic and visual qualities of the Golfo Dulce Poison Dart Frog — a creature endemic to the property's own forested streams. The frog's jewel-like colour, its rarity, and its absolute specificity to this location made it the perfect living symbol for the brand with an almost continuous line and geometric shapes that synthesize it as an ancestral totem. The logo system was built around its form — vivid, precise, and unmistakably of this place.
-Strategic repositioning — Biome over Hotel: I defined the conceptual inversion that unlocks OMRANÁ's true market value. By reframing the property as a biome that happens to contain a hotel — rather than a hotel set in nature — I shifted the pricing ceiling, the competitive set, and the emotional register entirely. This is not eco-lodging. This is expedition-grade access to an irreplaceable ecosystem.
-Experience architecture — the Jewels system: I enhanced the three flagship experience packages as Jewels — Marine Habitat, Rainforest, and Birdlife — each anchored by a specific endemic or endangered species, and each tied to a real citizen science conservation programme. This gives the brand scientific credibility, a conservation narrative, and a reason for the target guest to feel that their visit matters beyond tourism.
-Target audience definition & messaging strategy: I profiled the OMRANÁ guest with precision: the high-net-worth expedition traveller who spends $3,000–$4,000 per person for three nights in exchange for access to something genuinely unrepeatable. This is the NatGeo Expeditions profile, the safari-to-Botswana profile — a guest who does not buy comfort, they buy rarity. Every piece of communication was designed to speak that language.
-Visual identity & brand system: I directed a visual world rooted in the deep greens, jewel tones, and raw textures of the Golfo Dulce ecosystem — far from the pale, generic eco-resort palette. Dark forest greens, electric dart-frog accents, scientific illustration aesthetics, Vibrant oranges for clothing, identifiable off-road vehicles with cutting-edge technological design and a tone of voice that reads like a field journal crossed with a luxury manifesto.

-Brand identity
Full system — naming, logomark, colour, type, species illustration direction.
-Experience design
Jewels package architecture — content, naming, conservation narrative per package.
-Website & digital
Immersive UX — biome-first narrative, species pages, booking tied to expedition packages.
-Photography direction
Drone, underwater, macro wildlife — visual assets that make the biome the hero.
-PR & editorial
NatGeo, Condé Nast Traveller, BBC Wildlife — press strategy targeting expedition media.
-Conservation partnerships
Brand alliances with shark, whale, dart frog and cotinga research programmes — credibility engine.
-Luxury travel trade
Positioning in Virtuoso, Relais & Châteaux, and high-end expedition travel agencies.
-In-property materials
Field journals, species guides, villa identity — the brand lives in every guest touchpoint.