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Hotel Celare

More to discover in the places you least expect it.

Client
Hines, Crawford Hoying and Shaner Hotels
Place
Cincinnati, Ohio

  • #4

    Best New Hotel in the US, USA Today 10Best, 2026

  • $65M

    A 171-room hotel, open since January 2025

  • Celare

    The name on the building

Hotel Celare at dusk, seen from above the street, with its name over the entrance and down the corner of the building and a mural on its side
The open hotel

Clifton Heights, next to the University of Cincinnati, filled up on game days. Other days, a traveler had no reason to stay. A new Marriott Tribute Portfolio hotel had to give them one.

We wrote one guest profile for the whole hotel to design toward: the Social Hummingbird, a curious, social guest who treats stories like currency. Their stay runs from arriving and making a plan to coming back at night full of stories.

The Social Hummingbird page from the Hotel Celare brand strategy, with a quote and four short paragraphs on how this guest travels
The Social Hummingbird
  1. Land to Plan
  2. Explore the Nest
  3. Fly to the Next
  4. Indulge the Payoff
  5. Return to Perch
The guest’s five-stage journeyRedrawn from the original

So the big idea was Curate Curiosity: a hotel that wakes up the curious side of every guest. Its name, Celare, beat 155 others.

The Curate Curiosity page from the Hotel Celare brand strategy, set over a bright cut-paper collage
The big idea

Then we wrote about seventy ideas so a guest would have something to discover at every stage of the stay, from the first message before arrival to the rooms, the corridors and the street outside.

The sign for The Vick, the rooftop bar at Hotel Celare: white letters on a deep green wall, under a glowing globe lamp painted with the same red asterisk that dots the i
The Vick, the rooftop bar

Completed at Norris Design.

See it

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