Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino
A global brand, a distinct new home
A new home for a legendary name
Mandarin Oriental's first hotel in Greece had to make an entrance and earn a place.
In 2023, Mandarin Oriental made its debut in the Greek market with Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino, in the Peloponnese region of Messenia. It arrived in what we called "the year of the flags": a season crowded with openings from the industry's leading names, and a renewed appetite for travel to distinctive destinations. The brand carried six decades of legacy and Asian roots. Costa Navarino carried an identity of its own. Our task was to launch the hotel's social presence in a way that made a splash at the announcement, then built a presence strong enough to be maintained and developed long after it.
Layers of Messenia
We started from a simple observation: on social media, a luxury hotel competes with the personal posts of its followers' friends. To earn attention in that feed, the content has to go beyond rooms, venues, services and location. It has to inspire through aesthetics, appeal to the senses through architecture, show the quality of service and narrate the story of the destination.
From there we set four objectives (traffic from new guests, loyalty among returning ones, word of mouth among potential ones, and top-of-mind awareness), balanced across two areas of focus: business performance and reputation. We defined six audience profiles, nine content angles and a six-word tone of voice, then assigned each platform a distinct role. Instagram would carry inspiration through immersive visuals; Facebook would add value through information, drawing on Mandarin Oriental's own assets and third-party sources such as press and museums.
The strategy was also benchmarked. We analysed the 2022 Instagram and Facebook activity of 4 peer resorts and studied how 4 sister properties launched.
We analysed the annual Instagram and Facebook activity of 4 peer resorts and studied how 4 sister properties launched.
The central decision of the strategy was to treat the destination as part of the brand itself. We called it "Layers of Messenia": a region with many layers to peel back, each one revealing another side of Messenia and of the new Mandarin Oriental destination. Every storyline was designed to feed one continuous, coherent narrative, with balanced representation for each element of the resort.
The narrative works on three layers, each speaking to a different gap in knowledge.
The brand, introduced to Greece. For Greek audiences who already knew Messenia well, this layer introduced the group's legacy, values, hospitality philosophy and signature services.
The destination, introduced to the brand's fans. For Mandarin Oriental loyalists, Messenia was an all-new destination concept for the group. This layer put nature at the heart of the offer and presented a place rooted in tradition, a portal to the region's history, and a landscape worth remembering. It also showed how Mandarin Oriental's values translate in its newest home.
The Mandarin Oriental viewpoint. Where the two meet. Here people became the protagonists: couples, families and groups living the resort, and stories that blended Mandarin Oriental's high-end hospitality with Messenian warmth. The aim was to build bridges between the brand's values and Greek and regional customs and traditions.
The brand's most recognisable symbol carried this connection visually. The Mandarin Oriental fan was placed against Messenian landscapes, textures and landmarks, so that every image read as both the brand and the place.
The pre-opening period was a true window of opportunity: the one moment the resort could tell its story without the pace and distractions of day-to-day operation.
TThe pre-opening period offered a rare opportunity to shape the resort’s story with focus, before the rhythm of daily operations took over. We planned it as a sequence, moving from kick-off through pre-opening content to a countdown and the opening itself.
The account was designed to open with a nine-post Instagram grid that worked as a single image and as nine invitations. The Mandarin Oriental fan, the brand's most recognisable element, framed glimpses of Messenia and the hotel. Each thumbnail opened onto a short video, so followers discovered more with every swipe. We developed three creative routes for this first impression: "Messenian Mosaic", "Glimpses of Messenia" and "Textures of tradition", built on the patterns and materials of the resort, themselves inspired by the region.
From the very first post, the grid made the bridge between a worldwide brand and its new Greek home.
The slow reveal
A platform built to last
The opening was the first chapter of a story we are still writing, three seasons on.
The strategy was built for continuity from the start: monthly performance reporting and a quarterly review of the strategy itself. Since the opening season, Travelworks has managed the resort's social media for three consecutive seasons, working closely with its marketing team, alongside lifestyle PR for the Greek market and marketing collaterals.
Because the narrative was designed in layers, it could keep growing. Each new season added chapters to the same story: new experiences, new people and new reasons to return to Messenia. The fan that opened the Instagram grid stayed at the centre as the brand's recurring symbol, ready to carry bigger ideas once the resort was established.
One year on: the fan, worn
A year after opening, the brand's founding symbol became a collaboration with Mary Katrantzou.
In 2024, a year after Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino opened its doors, internationally acclaimed Greek fashion designer Mary Katrantzou became the resort's first First Social Fan Ambassador.
At the heart of the collaboration was a limited-edition kaftan, designed by Katrantzou and available only at the resort. It paired Mandarin Oriental's fan motif with a palette from her Spring/Summer 2024 collection, inspired by the calm of the resort and the lush Messenian landscape. Twenty per cent of proceeds support ELPIDA, the Association of Friends of Children with Cancer.
The collaboration was the natural next step of the launch strategy. The fan that introduced the brand to Greece was now worn, reinterpreted by a Greek creative voice and rooted in the same landscape.
Katrantzou described the partnership as a meeting of creative worlds, while General Manager Raul Levis pointed to the shared values behind it.
Travelworks supported the collaboration through PR and media relations and social media management.
Project specs
- Photo credits: D. Moraitis, Z. Viemon, G. Apostolidis
- Project timeline: Q1 2023 - today
- Project scope: Content strategy & curation, PR & Media Relations, Social Media management
- Travelworks team: K. Fotopoulou, D. Moraiti, D. Paraschaki, C. Kourkoulou, M. Dimou, A. Roussou
Case study date: Q4 2026
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