Hotel Heron · Aparium Hotel Group
Industry: Hospitality / Boutique Hotels / Restaurants & Bars
Services: Brand strategy · Property-level playbook · Content strategy · Creative direction · Content production · Instagram & Facebook strategy · Social media management
We turned four disconnected hotel brands and a corporate playbook into one go-to-market system, and 82% of what it built went straight to menus, reservations and events.
Background:
Hotel Heron is an independent boutique hotel in Old Town Alexandria, part of Aparium Hotel Group and now under Curio Collection by Hilton. It’s a property with more than one thing to sell: the hotel itself, plus three F&B concepts: KILN, a live-fire restaurant; Francis Hall, a speakeasy; and Good Fortune, a seasonal rooftop.
When we onboarded in August 2025 the property was roughly a year old. Strong physical product, real design investment, four concepts each strong on its own. None of them telling the same story.
Problem statement:
They came to us frustrated that the feed didn’t reflect the property: the design, the local partnerships, the character they’d spent a year building. It would have been easy to read that as a visibility problem and solve it by posting more. It wasn’t. Our brand audit found they’d only ever had Aparium’s corporate-level playbook: nothing translated down to the property, and no story connecting the hotel to KILN, Francis Hall and Good Fortune. Nobody could say why it was called Hotel Heron in the first place.
HERON IS HOME
We started with the question nobody had asked: why is it even called Hotel Heron? The bird gave us the answer. Calm, elegant, nests close to water, in cities, at home. Independent positioning without property alignment produces four brands nobody connects. Property alignment without independent positioning produces one brand nobody has a specific reason to visit. We created a unified brand story across all outlets, and a property level playbook for the brands to work off of all under the tagline and positioning of “Heron is Home”.
Hotel Heron
The Nest
The home. In Old Town Alexandria close to a body of water. Had to belong to the neighborhood, not just sit in it.
KILN
The Kitchen
The heart. Where people gather around the table, food straight from the fire. Had to win the neighborhood, not just the lobby.
Francis Hall
The Living Room
The soul. Where you unwind and have the intimate conversations. Had to be found on purpose.
Good Fortune
The Rooftop
The energy, the social anchor. Had to bring the whole property up with it.
Example slides from our property level playbook
We designed each brand’s digital storefront.
We defined content style, vibe, guardrails, personality, voice, and tone, and got clear about how each brand should show up online.
This is the blueprint our content teams reference on shoots and in editing sessions.
We produced four quarterly lifestyle photo and video shoots across the year, and the property owns every frame in a tagged, searchable content library.
VIDEO PRODUCTION
We created social-first video content that highlights the experience, vibes, and personality of Hotel Heron and its F&B outlets. We brought “Heron is Home” to life.
Good Fortune
Weekend Fun
Good Fortune
Man on the Street
Room Tour
Design Details
First Fridays Event
Voiceover Editing
SOCIAL-FIRST GRAPHICS
We created social-first graphics and carousels that educated and inspired the audience, leading to shares, saves, clicks, and likes.
Graphics built for the way people watch today: scroll-stopping, engaging, and optimized for social media. From carousels to stories content, we craft graphics designed to connect with your audience and drive them to engage.
We transformed their social media sales channels into a digital brand experience.
Left: the feed we inherited. Graphics, unedited photos with no consistent filter, no target audience, minimal lifestyle, no story. Right: the same property after Heron is Home.
Before IRL creative direction: graphic focused content, no story, no vibe
After IRL creative direction: experience-driven content
The Results · Hotel Heron
We didn’t just grow their following. We got locals walking in.
Hotel Heron had a strong property and no shared story. We built one, then built the channel that carries it. Twelve months later, 82% of every link click we measured went to menus, reservations and events: people deciding where to eat and drink, not people watching. The audience we built lives in Alexandria, DC and Arlington: local by design, not a travel audience.
“You brought us to market in a way we had not been able to do upon opening.”
SVP of Brand & Marketing, Aparium Hotel Group
2x
Engagement rate
First in the local peer set, and 3.56× the DC aspirational set.
13.9%
From the top 3 posts
Lowest concentration in the peer set. The Alexandrian: 31.5%. Not one lucky post.
82%
Of clicks went to F&B and Events
Menus, reservations and events.
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