Bruch Dear Eva, Hotel Blü is strongly influenced by you. It’s urban, lively and colorful. It says on your website that you are in every corner of the hotel. Do you also find yourself in the branding?

Eva Eder You designed this beautiful signet for us: a bud rising. But for me it also represents an elk antler. Someone else once recognized a coral in it, which I found very exciting, because that wouldn’t have occurred to me at all. One of our neighbors thought it was a uterus. What I’m trying to say is that our logo can be understood in a hundred different ways. And all of them are right! I like it so much because we humans are also so diverse. Now I’ve come a long way … Back to the question: when I turn the bud over, I see a grounded woman – and that’s totally me.

Bruch You moved from Vienna to Gastein in 2020. You gave up your top job as a lawyer and opened a hotel instead.

Eva Eder Moving to Gastein was the best decision of my life. Bibiana, my good friend with whom I run the Blü together, comes from the hotel industry and knows her stuff. I had no idea at the beginning. I also had no idea about graphic design. As a lawyer, I associated the term brand with trademark law.

“Quite honestly:
The design determines our product.
It is essential!”

Eva Eder, Blü Hotel

Bruch So you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into?

Eva Eder Not at all! Bibiana said right at the beginning that we needed a branding agency. Well, I already had an idea: namely that I didn’t want to work with a big agency. Simply because I trained as a lawyer in a large law firm and therefore know that you can be dependent on better or worse designers in huge companies. You were recommended to me by friends.

Bruch We still remember the inquiry well. We immediately had the impression that this could be a project with a lot of creative freedom.

Eva Eder You also did a great job guiding us through the process. What drove me crazy at the beginning was your clear work-life balance.

Fracture Why is that?

Eva Eder Yes, the fact that you’re not available at the weekend, that you’re not available during the lunch break, I never knew anything like that. As a lawyer, I used to have 14 billable hours even on Whit Monday. That was a learning process for me. It was also a good learning process, because that’s how my employees work now. But otherwise everything was easy and also kind of funny. Because Josef comes from our neighboring valley – and vice versa, I have a connection to Lienz, Kurt’s home. It was somehow like it was meant to be.

Bruch The Blü is something of an exotic hotel in Gastein. Was that intentional on your part?

Eva Eder Bibi and I had a few things in mind right from the start: we wanted to create a hotel that didn’t yet exist here in Gastein. Something urban and cozy. With good food and art. With real wood and real metal. Not plastic that looks like plastic. And something else.

Breakage Yes?

Eva Eder There are houses, even here in the area, that are only made for their bubble and therefore exclude others from the outset. That’s exactly what we didn’t want.

Bruch Das Blü is intended to be an urban home in the countryside. A place that sprouts wild buds, as we later put it in the texts.

Eva Eder I remember being so surprised by the word Blü. The name also came from you. I would never have thought of it myself. When I heard Blü, I felt like I was in a grand hotel in the Engadin in Switzerland, a very positive connotation for me. Beautiful! At first we had actually decided on a different name, but it didn’t work out for legal reasons. Now I’m so incredibly happy that it didn’t work out and that it turned out to be Blü.

Fracture Why?

Eva Eder Blü tells my personal story. How free this job makes me. It’s not about having to. It’s about being able and allowed to. The claim fits: “I am so free.”

Bruch It’s similar with our branding: we don’t force anyone to use it, but you can and may. What’s it like for you, do you still use branding in everyday life?

Eva Eder There are five defined flower colors that I love, and I still work with them consistently, for example. Not biblical, because it doesn’t always work. The last time we looked for tiles, for example, we couldn’t find them anywhere in our baby pink shade, so we went for a different pink. When I buy new parasols or order something else, I do it in the five colors. I always have the colors on my phone.

Bruch The colors are of course striking. Was there anything else that immediately caught your eye?

Eva Eder Yes, the round design language. The Blü lettering is also round. I’m a very visual person and perhaps that’s why I pay more attention to details like that.

Bruch We wanted to convey lightness with these shapes. Movement. After all, things are not always rigid and serious at Blü.

Eva Eder Because I exist: the Chief Entertainment Officer. I read that somewhere years ago and knew it would be my title one day. But it also has a kernel of truth. Because my mood is reflected everywhere, including in the team and among the guests.

Bruch We also pick up on the playfulness in the illustrations. We love working with illustrations – they were also high on your list of priorities.

Eva Eder The illustrations were actually a challenge for us because we didn’t have any pictures to go into marketing with at first because the hotel wasn’t ready yet. And then you introduced us to a really great partner in Sebastian Curi. The guy is amazing! I’ve now also had him take a portrait of my dog Poldi.

Bruch We are really pleased about something like this, because it is precisely these implementations that can make a branding something special.

Eva Eder Because you asked at the beginning where I was in the branding: Our contribution, that is, from Bibiana and me, was to say that we want more. And even more. That’s also important, I think, that as a client you don’t say in between: “Shit, that already costs so much, we’d rather leave it all out.”

Bruch What we also really appreciated in this context was that you paid so much attention to the topic of the guidance system – and also had something left over in the budget for it.

Eva Eder I’m also really pleased with the signage system. It’s really quite extraordinary with these raised plastic signs and door numbers. It’s nice to walk past them every time. Although I have to admit that we are now finding it a little more difficult to deal with such expenses during ongoing operations. Nevertheless, it was clear to us that we had to be consistent, especially at the beginning.

Bruch For us, something like this is a stroke of luck. Of course, it helps us a lot to create a coherent overall picture that ultimately pays off for the brand.

Eva Eder I had that impression too, which I found positive, by the way. I never had the feeling that you were suggesting something to sell us something we didn’t need. But because it’s good for the project.

Bruch Would you still do anything differently today?

Eva Eder Yes, we have changed the menus in the meantime. Having them printed elsewhere and attaching them to a plastic plate with rubber bands was simply not so easy for us to handle on a day-to-day basis. We now print the cards ourselves, which also gives us the advantage of being able to change things from week to week. Of course, there are also business considerations behind this.

Bruch We can well understand that.

Eva Eder Yes, but it was important that we made such a statement at the beginning: It blooms differently! There’s always a danger that you become normal over the years. But some things are more normal and more practical.

Bruch Do you think the Blü would work without its design?

Eva Eder Honestly? The design determines our product. It is essential. We are selling a house here that – in quotation marks – has nothing. Other hotels build huge wellness areas with large pools. We have 76 rooms and two saunas with a view on the roof. We have a yoga room and a relaxation room and, most recently, an ice tub. We even have a proper library. But who cares about that? People want to know whether there’s a pool or not. We don’t have a pool.

Bruch You mean you have to score differently without a pool?

Eva Eder Exactly. We have to differentiate ourselves from the other three-star hotels. The design makes the visible difference.

“The design is timeless,
but crazy.
It is unusual and
and yet right.”

Eva Eder, Blü Hotel

Bruch How would you describe your design?

Eva Eder It’s timeless, but crazy. It’s unusual and yet right. We can use it to appeal to people who are design-savvy but want to travel more cheaply. There are many of them, and I’m one of them. I’m happy when something is beautiful, although beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Bruch So design is also an economic factor for you?

Eva Eder Sure! If we had simply continued to call the hotel Salzburger Hof, as it used to be called, and if we had tried a self-made branding, we would never be able to achieve the room rates we have now. Never. We would also never have been able to afford the extension if it had simply been rebranded as the Salzburger Hof. Of course, we have our fantastic kitchen and great staff, but the design is the basis of everything. You can take a hotel to another level with it.

Bruch All the better that so much of it is present in your hotel.

Eva EderWhenI walk through the Blü, I really live with your design. When I walk through the room wing, there are the carpets with the logo on them in the corridors. I’ve known them for more than four years now and I still love them.

Bruch Hopefully the joy will last a long time. Thank you, dear Eva.