The Arbor – Hilton Birmingham Metropole

Birmingham, UK

Away from the hustle and bustle of the Hilton Birmingham Metropole’s events hub, The Arbor has been designed as a place of tranquillity where guests can enjoy nourishing food in calm surroundings. The breakfast and daytime buffet zone is inspired in both design and name by one of Birmingham’s best attractions, the Botanical Gardens. In fact, Botanical Gardens’ creator John Claudius Loudon, was the first to use the term ‘arboretum’ in the context of garden design.

Birmingham is in fact one of the UK’s greenest metropolitan areas and The Arbor reflects this perfectly through earthy tones and manmade textures contrasting with lush organic shapes of nature to bring a sense of the outside, in.

Along with flora, Birmingham’s Botanical Gardens are famous for their stunning Victorian glasshouses. The Arbor’s graphic palette pairs these two elements beautifully – with use of heritage bloom illustrations across menus and other consumables complementing a modern interpretation of the Victorian architecture of the hothouses.

Interior design, Strategy, Print design, Brand identity

Great narrative weaves its way through every successful hotel brand story…in fact …it’s your unique way to engage guests and drive loyalty at every turn. Dean Concannon said “The starched formality of traditional hotels or the standardisation and blandness of the budget and mid-market brands is no longer good enough – they are seeking genuine engagement and opportunities to share what they have discovered throughout their stay. Brand assets then bring the story to life by recommending places to visit in ‘Green Birmingham’, revealing the Botanical Gardens’ history along the way – from the one-of-a-kind fern houses to Gladly, a cross-eyed bear who was once an inhabitant of the garden’s menagerie (fondly named by locals after a hymn, “Glady, the cross I’d bear!”).