Hotel Utano lit from within at blue hour, seen across its lawn through bare branches

Hotel New Awaji Group

Where Japanese travelers stay

Hotel New Awaji Group: Hotel Utano

In 1953, a single inn opened on the Komoe Coast of Awaji Island. Seven decades later, Hotel New Awaji Group is one of the most respected hospitality companies in Kansai, the region of western Japan that includes Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. Still family-owned, the group now operates more than 20 properties across six destinations: Awaji Island in the Seto Inland Sea, the port city of Kobe, Kyoto, the Lake Biwa resort area, Okayama, and the island of Shikoku. The portfolio ranges from historic hot spring ryokan, the traditional Japanese inn, to the Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel & Towers.

Moongate is the group’s partner for reaching international guests. We shaped the group’s first English-language website, defining the guest journey, content structure, and visual direction, then worked with the group’s local development partners through build. We built its global copy and content standards, developed social strategy across the full property portfolio, and continue to advise on PR, market strategy, and guest experience.

Seventy years of hospitality had never been told in English. The work connects the depth of omotenashi, the Japanese practice of anticipating a guest’s needs before they are spoken, with the clarity international travelers need to choose a property, book it, and come back.

Awaji Island Kobe Kyoto Lake Biwa Okayama Shikoku

The partnership

How we work with them.

Moongate works as an embedded design and management consulting partner across the group, from the guest journey on screen to the printed object a guest holds in their hand. We define the experience, the standards, and the design direction. Local production and development partners execute against them.

Most hospitality groups in Japan face the same gap. The service is world class. The way it gets presented to an international guest is not. Closing that gap takes two things at once: enough fluency in Japanese operations to know what should never be changed, and enough distance from them to see what a first-time visitor from abroad will not understand.

Our team is American, Japanese, and Korean. We work in the languages, we understand how a family-run group makes decisions, and we bring the design and operating standards international travelers already expect from the brands they choose everywhere else. That combination is why the group brought us in, and why the engagement has grown from a single website into a multi-year advisory relationship.

Cinematic film for Hotel New Awaji Group, shot and directed with the support of Moongate Design Studio. Plays without sound; use the controls for audio.

Inside the partnership.

Lounge with floor-to-ceiling glass, a long timber bench and armchairs facing the sea at sunset

Brand & Creative Direction

Defining how a 20-property group should sound and look.

Indoor infinity bath under a dark canopy, its still water meeting the sea horizon through a wide opening

Digital Strategy & Website

The group’s first English-language website, shaped around the international guest.

Dining room with timber chairs and full-height windows onto a garden of moss, rock and lawn

SEO & AI Discoverability

Built to be found by search engines and by AI assistants.

Open-air hot-spring bath at dusk, ringed by pines and boulders, a lit guest wing alongside

Social Media Strategy

A portfolio-level plan for how the group speaks online.

Two patterned fabric pouches and scattered glossy marbled sweets on a hammered metal tray

Print & Guest Collateral

Seasonal design guests carry home with them.

Chef at a lit griddle counter in a warm timber dining room, a table set with glasses in front

Strategy & Advisory

A standing bilingual seat at the leadership table.

Biwafront Hikone, its guest tower above a lawn on the shore of Lake Biwa under open sky — Hotel New Awaji Group: Biwafront Hikone

Brand & Creative Direction

Twenty properties, generations of history, no shared standard for how any of it reached an international guest. Each property had built its own look and voice over time. In Japanese that reads as individual character. In English, to a traveler comparing options, it reads as twenty unrelated hotels.

We audited the full portfolio: how each property described itself, what it showed, who it was speaking to. Then we defined the layer above it. A brand architecture separating what the group promises from what each property expresses on its own. An English voice with rules specific enough to write from, including how to handle Japanese terms a traveler will not know. Visual direction covering photography, typography, and color, built to sit alongside each property’s existing identity rather than replace it.

The standards are written and in use. Adoption across the portfolio is ongoing, with each property entering the system as its assets are refreshed, in a sequence set with the group’s leadership.

Digital Strategy & Website

The group had no English-language website. International guests arriving through search or a booking platform found Japanese pages, or nothing.

We shaped the design direction: who the site is for, what a guest needs to see before they book, how twenty properties across six destinations organize into something navigable. Look and feel, page structure, the property page template, and the guest journey. Hotel New Awaji Group’s in-house technology team handled all development and launch.

The site is live. We continue to advise on structure and content as the portfolio changes.

Visit the live English site newawaji-hotels.com/en

SEO & AI Discoverability

Most travelers no longer start at a hotel’s website. They start at a search engine, a booking platform, or increasingly an AI assistant, and only reach the site once a decision is nearly made.

We built the English content to be found in all three. Keyword and destination research for how international travelers actually search for the Seto Inland Sea, Kobe, and Kansai onsen travel. Page structure and metadata designed to be read cleanly by search engines. Structured content that answers the questions travelers ask, in the format AI assistants can retrieve and cite.

Most hospitality groups in Japan have not addressed the third channel at all. Building for it now is a position that gets harder to take later.

Print & Guest Collateral

Print is where omotenashi is still most visible. It is also the part of the guest experience most often left in Japanese only, which means an international guest holds something they cannot read.

We work across the group’s guest-facing print: seasonal materials, in-room collateral, and the guest magazine. The work is bilingual by default, designed so the English is written rather than translated, and produced to a standard that matches what a guest already holds in their hand at the property.

Strategy & Advisory

The work above is ongoing, which means the group needs a standing partner rather than a series of projects.

Moongate holds a bilingual seat at the leadership table. We advise on PR and market strategy, on how the group positions itself to international travelers and trade partners, and on guest experience decisions as new properties and renovations come forward. That remit is no longer only Western travelers: we also advise on the Korean market, one of Japan’s largest inbound audiences and one that books, travels, and reviews on entirely different platforms. We work in Japanese and English, and we understand how a family-run group makes decisions, which matters as much as any recommendation we bring.

The retainer is continuous. It is also where most of the group’s international-facing decisions now get shaped before they become projects.