NUMA
Since May 2022 we've been building Numa's brand presence in the DACH market from the ground up - turning an unknown hospitality concept into a trusted brand name. From 2023, we expanded our scope to take on Numa's corporate communications, shifting the narrative beyond travel editorial into real estate and business media to support the company's growth story with investors, industry stakeholders and a broader B2B audience.
From unknown to trusted in DACH lifestyle media: we built Numa's brand awareness from the ground up through press stays that turned firsthand experience into authentic editorial coverage. A continuous creative pitching programme around travel trends, seasonal angles and new location openings gave lifestyle journalists compelling reasons to keep coming back - and they did.
The Starting Point
Numa launched right before the pandemic hit - a bold bet on a new kind of urban hospitality: tech-enabled, design-led, flexible, and built for people who want to explore a city like they actually live there. By the time we came on board in May 2022, the product was strong and the footprint was growing fast across Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Seville, Prague and Vienna. The problem was simple: almost nobody in the DACH market knew them.
In a consumer travel media landscape crowded with legacy hotel brands and well-funded lifestyle competitors, Numa needed more than a press release. They needed journalists to genuinely understand - and believe in - hospitality concept built around smartphone check-in, keyless access, premium basics and neighborhood immersion. The brief was to build brand awareness from the ground up, position Numa as the go-to travel brand for the culturally curious, and create the kind of editorial trust that turns a first placement into an ongoing relationship.
What We Did
Consumer and lifestyle media were the primary arena - national and city-level outlets covering travel, design, urban culture and weekend escapes. Rather than pitching blind, we built the strategy around direct experience: organising press stays that let editors and journalists test the Numa concept themselves, removing skepticism at the source and turning firsthand experience into authentic coverage.
Alongside this, we developed a continuous creative pitching programme - seasonal angles, emerging travel trends, city guides, opening news - producing ready-to-use content tailored to editorial planning cycles. Each new location opening became a story opportunity, and each story opportunity was designed to make a lifestyle editor's job easier.
What We Have Moved
Coverage came not from cold outreach, but from journalists who had slept in a Numa room and got it. That shift in credibility quality - from brand-supplied claims to editor-owned experience — is what moved Numa from unknown to trusted in DACH lifestyle media. Placements landed in the outlets that matter to the target audience, framed in the language of discovery rather than advertising. And crucially, the relationships built through press stays became durable: journalists who covered a Berlin opening came back for Rome, for Madrid, for the next season's travel story. Numa went from a blank on the DACH media map to a brand with genuine lifestyle editorial traction - and a growing network of journalists who recommend it because they've actually stayed there.
