Mews and Koto build a hospitality tech brand that refuses to blend in

Hospitality technology has a visual problem. Scroll through any competitor landscape and you’ll find yourself drowning in safe blues, sterile interfaces and photography of empty hotel rooms – all the furniture perfectly arranged, not a guest in sight. Mews, a cloud-based hotel management platform trusted by more than 12,500 properties worldwide, had spent years operating as a recognised disruptor in this space. But their identity no longer matched the ambition driving the company forward. Koto was brought in for a full rebrand that would span over a year of close collaboration. The task went beyond a surface-level refresh, as every element would be rebuilt, from strategic foundations to colour, typography and the wider design system. At the centre sits a positioning that captures both the company’s confidence and the transformation hotels experience when adopting the platform: ‘Impact You Can't Ignore.’ “It genuinely felt like an open goal,” explains Issey Conway, Creative Director at Koto. “Differentiation felt like a clear opportunity rather than a risk. We never considered leaning into convention – the ambition was always to build a brand rooted in impact, and that required standing out.” That impact arrives most immediately through colour. Pink – a lot of pink – now leads the palette, elevated from existing brand equity into something deliberately ownable. Mews had already built recognition around the hue, so amplifying it became a natural strategic move rather than an arbitrary choice. The decision to show real human presence rather than vacant interiors compounds this distinction. Even when people aren’t directly visible, the art direction implies occupation – warmth and life suggested through considered composition rather than stock-image emptiness.