Hotel Shilla, a leading hospitality and duty-free operator in South Korea, unveiled the brand identity of its global operations -- Shilla Monogram -- on Wednesday, prior to the February opening of its first overseas hotel in Vietnam’s resort city of Da Nang.

To minimize operational risk in the new market, Hotel Shilla will operate the new Da Nang hotel of Shilla Monogram by forging a contract with a third party. It will consist of 300 rooms in a nine-story building.

According to the company, Shilla Monogram’s logo illustrates the alphabet “M,” combined with the curvy shape of “S,” which represents Hotel Shilla. The logo portrays its care for customers and authenticity as a top hotel chain, it said. 

“The brand identity of its overseas operations represents a fusion of Hotel Shilla’s 40-year-long value, emotion and characteristic of overseas locations where we seek to expand,” said a company official. 

The company added that Shilla Monogram will show a “sophisticated combination of Hotel Shilla and the location’s symbolic character.” 

Under its overseas expansion plan, it has also embarked on constructing a 200-room hotel Shilla Stay San Jose in Silicon Valley which will launch in 2021. 

The company said opening hotels in 10 overseas cities including Bali in Indonesia and cities in China is also under review. 

With this addition, the company now runs five-star luxury brand The Shilla, upper scale brand Shilla Monogram and four-star premium business brand Shilla Stay. It has The Shilla hotels each in Seoul and Jeju and 11 Shilla Stay locations across South Korea. 

An upper upscale brand hotel has an average room charge in the top 15 percent of high-end hotels bracket. The highest level is “luxury” hotels. 

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)