How do you bring ‘travel’ back to a travel brand?

Sounds like a strange ques­tion, doesn’t it? But for Kuoni UK, it was exact­ly the right one to ask.

For years, Kuoni had care­ful­ly mod­ernised its brand, mov­ing away from its icon­ic 1970s globe, the instant­ly recog­nis­able mark of glob­al adven­ture that had defined the com­pa­ny for decades. The inten­tion was under­stand­able: the desire to sim­pli­fy, mod­ernise, and sig­nal a for­ward-look­ing brand. But in doing so, some­thing unin­tend­ed hap­pened. As shops were redesigned with­out clear visu­al cues, passers-by mis­took Kuoni stores for styl­ish fur­ni­ture show­rooms or phone shops. Bril­liant, knowl­edge­able trav­el experts had to watch poten­tial cus­tomers stroll straight past, head­ing instead into the clear­ly brand­ed trav­el agent next door.

That’s the thing about brand iden­ti­ties: some­times, in pur­suit of sleek moder­ni­ty, there’s a risk of becom­ing anony­mous. With­out the visu­al short­hand of ​‘trav­el’, Kuoni had unin­ten­tion­al­ly hid­den its pio­neer­ing her­itage. Found­ed in 1906 by vision­ary adven­tur­er Alfred Kuoni, this was a brand that lit­er­al­ly invent­ed ways to explore the globe — tak­ing thou­sands to Japan’s Expo ​’70 and intro­duc­ing char­ter flights to the Far East long before such jour­neys became commonplace.

As some­one who hadn’t per­son­al­ly hon­ey­mooned with Kuoni (unlike seem­ing­ly every friend I knew), my strongest mem­o­ry of the brand was still that icon­ic globe. It cap­tured glam­our, adven­ture, and the gold­en age of trav­el. But some­where along the way, like a dreamy Mal­dives sun­set slip­ping gen­tly below the hori­zon, the globe dis­ap­peared, qui­et­ly removed around 15 years ago. With­out it, Kuoni had unin­ten­tion­al­ly become pigeon­holed as the lux­u­ry hon­ey­moon spe­cial­ist for the Indi­an Ocean, its wider glob­al her­itage fad­ing from view.

Bring­ing back the globe wasn’t mere­ly sym­bol­ic, it lit­er­al­ly rein­tro­duced the world. It broad­ened per­cep­tions, mak­ing Kuoni feel expan­sive, adven­tur­ous, and gen­uine­ly glob­al again.

So, how do you bring trav­el, and the globe, back to Kuoni, with­out sim­ply look­ing back­ward? We knew the globe had to return, but not as nos­tal­gia. Instead, we reimag­ined it as a mod­ern sym­bol of dis­cov­ery, inspi­ra­tion, and ​‘wow’ moments around the world. 

‘Trav­el Kuoni’, rather than the out­dat­ed ​‘Kuoni Trav­el’, became an invi­ta­tion — a mind­set rather than just a mode of trav­el. It urged cus­tomers to seek some­thing remark­able, recon­nect­ing the brand with the sense of won­der that inspired Alfred Kuoni more than a cen­tu­ry earlier.

Since rein­tro­duc­ing the globe, Kuoni has seen a 49.2% increase in hol­i­day book­ing appoint­ments — a clear sig­nal that the refreshed iden­ti­ty is res­onat­ing with cus­tomers. At the same time, inde­pen­dent research shows a sig­nif­i­cant uplift in brand health and con­sid­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among fam­i­lies. Togeth­er, it’s tan­gi­ble proof that clar­i­ty in brand­ing doesn’t just change how a brand looks, it changes how peo­ple respond.

Some­times, the smartest thing a brand can do isn’t relent­less­ly move for­ward but instead, bold­ly reclaim what made it spe­cial in the first place.

Or, as we now like to say: ​“If you want cus­tomers to see the world, first, show them a globe.”