Case study
Hotel Humano
Puerto Escondido, Mexico · Grupo Habita · Opened 2025
- Client
- Grupo Habita
- Location
- Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico
- Scope
- Concept, naming, identity, OS&E, website, launch
- Year
- 2025
The place
Hotel Humano. Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. 39 rooms and suites, a rooftop bar, a courtyard spa, two hundred meters from Zicatela, one of the heaviest beach breaks in the world. Opened January 2025. The 15th hotel from Grupo Habita, founded by Carlos Couturier and Moisés Micha.
The brief
Carlos Couturier called at stage zero. The site was chosen, construction had started, and there was no concept, no name, no story. The brief was simple to say and hard to do: make a hotel that belongs to Puerto Escondido's surf culture and its wave, and that locals would claim as their own rather than tolerate. Every other option on the table looked like a Tulum transplant.
“Make a hotel that belongs to Puerto Escondido, not one that lands on it.”
The insight
Puerto Escondido is a community before it is a destination. You cannot brand your way in. The hotel had to feel like it had been there before it was built, as if the town had produced it, not received it. So we worked with the people of La Punta and Zicatela instead of about them, and designed a product that reflects an installation older than its own opening.
The idea
A family surf house. Humano is what you feel walking through Puerto Escondido: human, communal, a large family that makes room for one more. The name came from that feeling, not from a brainstorm. Everything else follows it: a warm, hand-drawn identity, a tone that speaks like a neighbor, and spaces designed to be shared by guests and locals alike.
What we built
- Reveal
- Territory, community and audience work on site in Puerto Escondido.
- Compose
- Concept, naming, storytelling, visual identity, tone of voice, art direction.
- Activate
- OS&E, collaterals, signage, website, launch content, social media.
- Grow
- Ongoing art direction across all touchpoints.
In real life
The lobby. Double-height, open to the street through latticed concrete, it is the room where the hotel and the town meet. Surfers walk through with boards, locals come for the bar, guests linger because it feels like someone's living room. It is the most photographed space in the hotel and the clearest proof that the brand made it off the page.
Result
Opened January 2025. Member of Design Hotels. Selected in the Michelin Guide Keys, Mexico 2025. Covered by Sleeper, Hotel Designs, IFDM, We Heart and Superfuture.
- LOGO | Design Hotels
- LOGO | Michelin Guide Keys
- LOGO | Sleeper
- LOGO | Hotel Designs
- LOGO | IFDM
Credits
- Owner
- Grupo Habita
- Architecture and interiors
- Plantea Estudio, Jorge Hernández de la Garza
- Brand, concept and art direction
- LOBBY Studio
- Photography
- courtesy Design Hotels
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