Before You Invest in Branding, Read This
How a full brand build for a Puerto Rico Airbnb portfolio drove real bookings and what the reviews revealed when the guest experience couldn't match the marketing.
THE BRIEF
In July 2025, Char. Design Studio was brought on to work with Caracol Retreats, a short-term rental portfolio of seven coastal properties located in Puerto Rico, operating under the parent company Casas de Caracol, a local real estate brokerage.
What we inherited wasn't a brand. It was a collection of listings: some random photos on Instagram, a Facebook page with no cohesive identity, and no presence on TikTok. The properties themselves were oceanfront retreats at Shacks Beach, beachside villas at Jobos, a lake hideaway at Guajataca all in stunning locations with great potential. But none of that beauty was being communicated in any organized or strategic way. Our goal was to change that.
What we were working with…
🏠 7 Airbnb listings across Puerto Rico, no unified brand just an Airbnb profile
📸 Instagram & Facebook: random, unbranded photo posts
📵 TikTok: did not exist
🔗 No centralized booking funnel
🎨 No logo, no visual identity, no brand guidelines
🏢 Parent company Casas de Caracol (real estate brokerage) had no brand connection to rentals/property management
What we built
This engagement was not a social media management contract. It was a brand build from the ground up — that encompassed identity design, content strategy, platform creation, and funnel architecture.
01 — Logo & Visual Identity
We designed the Caracol Retreats logo and established the brand's complete look and feel: color palette, typography, photography style, and tone of voice. The result was a visual identity that could represent both the short-term rental portfolio and connect upward to Casas de Caracol's brokerage brand; two audiences, one coherent system.
Before this work, there was no visual consistency between the Airbnb listings, the Instagram page, or any other touchpoint. After, every piece of content, every platform, and every listing felt like part of the same world.
02 — TikTok: Built From Zero
Caracol Retreats had no TikTok presence before July 2025. We created the account, developed the content strategy, and produced all videos from scratch. The focus was on short-form content that captured the sensory experience of the properties: ocean views, beach access, coastal lifestyle, the specific magic of the west side of Puerto Rico.
TikTok is one of the most powerful travel discovery platforms in the world. A single video showing the right sunset at Shacks Beach can reach hundreds of thousands of potential guests. Building this channel from nothing was a foundational investment in long-term brand visibility.
03 — Instagram Transformation
The existing Instagram account was rebuilt around the new brand identity. Random photos were replaced with intentional, on-brand content. The aesthetic became consistent, the captions purposeful, and the overall profile transformed from a casual photo dump into a destination brand worth following.
04 — Linktree Booking Funnel
We built and organized a Linktree hub connecting the social audience directly to each individual Airbnb listing, with custom thumbnails and clear calls to action per property. This created a seamless path from discovery (Instagram or TikTok) to consideration (Linktree) to booking (Airbnb) — a proper top-of-funnel architecture that hadn't existed before.
05 — Brand Architecture: Casas de Caracol
Critically, the brand work didn't stop at the rental portfolio. We connected Caracol Retreats to its parent company, Casas de Caracol, creating a coherent brand architecture that served two distinct but related audiences: travelers looking for short-term coastal stays, and property owners and buyers engaging with the brokerage side of the business.
This kind of multi-tier brand thinking is rarely considered at the early stages of a hospitality brand — and it's exactly the kind of strategic foundation that supports long-term growth.
Before Char. Design Studio
✗ No logo or visual identity
✗ No TikTok account
✗ Unbranded Instagram & Facebook
✗ No booking funnel
✗ No connection to parent brand
✗ 7 listings, no unified story
After Char. Design Studio
✓ Logo + full brand identity system
✓ TikTok built from zero, all content original
✓ Cohesive branded Instagram presence
✓ Linktree funnel linking all 7 listings
✓ Brand architecture tied to Casas de Caracol
✓ One brand. One story. Seven properties.
What happened when the marketing worked
The strategy did exactly what it was designed to do. The brand looked credible, the content was compelling, and the booking funnel worked. Guests found Caracol Retreats on social media, followed the Linktree to the listings, and booked stays at properties along the west coast of Puerto Rico.
But here's where the story gets honest and instructive.
"Marketing can fill the top of the funnel. It cannot fix what happens inside the property."
Several of the properties in the portfolio were carrying unresolved maintenance issues; problems that pre-dated our involvement and persisted throughout the engagement. Hot water failures. Broken AC units. Faulty door and window locks. Insufficient supplies for the guest capacity advertised.
Before the brand existed, fewer guests were finding these properties. The maintenance problems existed, but the audience was small enough that the damage was limited. Once the brand started working, once the content started reaching people — more guests arrived. And they arrived with expectations shaped by the polished, aspirational world we had built for the brand online.
When reality didn't match that world, the reviews said so.
What the Reviews Revealed: Before & After
We analyzed guest reviews across the Caracol Retreats portfolio comparing the period before our engagement (pre-July 2025) to the period during and after (July 2025 onward). The pattern is clear.
Before July 2025
Issues Existed, But Expectations Were Lower
Maintenance problems appeared in reviews as far back as 2024 — months before we started. But the language guests used tells you something important: they were frustrated, but they weren't specifically comparing the property to a brand promise.
Nancy, San Antonio TX ★★★☆☆ January 2025
"The home is in an incredible location right on the beach, with stunning views. However, we experienced significant issues during our stay. We went 4 days without hot water, and of the three bedrooms with air conditioning, only one unit was functional... these are unfortunately reoccurring issues, not just ours."
Erin, Grapevine TX ★★★★★ March 2025
"Our stay was not without issues (malfunctioning door lock, no soap, missing gate opener). However, the location and view made up for every inconvenience and then some. Ready to go back!"
Notice what's happening in the pre-August reviews: guests are forgiving the issues because the location is genuinely spectacular and their expectations weren't set particularly high. The brand wasn't promising much — so it wasn't failing to deliver much.
After July 2025
The Expectation Gap Opens
Once the brand was active — logo live, TikTok running, Instagram cohesive, Linktree funnel directing traffic — guests began arriving with a different frame of reference. They had seen the content. They had formed an impression. And when the property didn't match that impression, the reviews became more specific, more detailed, and more damaging.
Lisa, Tampa FL ★★☆☆☆ July 2025
"We really wanted to love this place — it's in a perfect location with beautiful views and easy beach access. Unfortunately, our experience was impacted by several issues. Almost no water pressure: we couldn't shower, do dishes, or flush toilets easily... The windows and doors facing the beach had faulty locks, and one window couldn't be secured at all. This issue has been mentioned in other reviews and definitely needs to be addressed. Overall, needs more maintenance and responsiveness."
Gabriela, Puerto Rico ★★★☆☆ October 2025
"The best thing about this property is the fact that it's beachfront, which of course is magical. The actual property was 'ok' but unfortunately did not meet expectations based on advertisement and price."
Gabriela's review is the defining data point of this entire case study. She is not just complaining about a broken faucet. She is explicitly naming the gap between the marketing and the reality — 'did not meet expectations based on advertisement and price.' That sentence didn't exist in any pre-July review. It emerged directly as a result of the brand doing its job.
Dwight, Cayey PR ★★★☆☆ December 2025
"This Airbnb does not compare to the beautiful view. The toaster did not work and was held together by a rubber band. The cabinet door of the Lazy-Susan fell off. The dining room lampshade was crumbling in pieces. The front door key lock was broken. Hot water in the common bathroom is extremely intermittent. Electricity and water went out for several hours with no generator or water backup. High-paying turnover is priority. Beware."
Alicia, Fort Worth TX ★★★☆☆ January 2026
"Overall this place is absolutely beautiful. Very clean, very spacious, very close to the beach but not sea-side. Unfortunately we did not have any warm water to shower for the days we stayed. Responses from host were very delayed and ultimately didn't fix the issue — no reply. Apart from that, had a good experience!"
Why TikTok Didn't Take Off
TikTok's algorithm in the travel and hospitality niche rewards two things above everything else: aspirational content that people save and share, and social proof that makes viewers trust what they're seeing. We had the first. The second was being undermined by the reviews.
A traveler who finds a stunning Shacks Beach reel on TikTok and then searches the Airbnb listing doesn't just look at the photos, they read the reviews. A 4.54-star rating with a 'bottom 10% of eligible listings' badge is a quiet but powerful deterrent. The content was doing its job. The review score was undoing it.
Follower growth stalled not because the content wasn't strong, since it was, but because the full signal wasn't there. Great content plus weak social proof equals friction. And friction stalls growth.
"You can't out-market a broken guest experience.
The algorithm knows. The guests know."
The Lesson: Full-Funnel Thinking for Hospitality Brands
This case study isn't a cautionary tale about social media marketing. The marketing worked. The brand we built was real, strategic, and well-executed. This is a lesson about what marketing can and cannot do and why the most successful hospitality brands treat operations and marketing as two sides of the same coin.
The Full Guest Journey / Every Step Matters
1. Discovery → Guest finds you online whether on TikTok, Instagram, or Airbnb search
2. Consideration → They click through to your listing, read your reviews
3. Booking → They book based on what they see and read
4. Arrival → They experience what you actually deliver
5. Review → They tell the next guest what they found
6. Algorithm → Social media growth in the hospitality space runs on one thing: guests who loved their stay enough to share it. Without that, the algorithm has nothing to amplify. And when the experience is bad enough to complain about publicly, the algorithm will amplify that instead.
Marketing controls steps 1–3. You control steps 4–6. Both have to be strong. One without the other is a leaky funnel.
For property managers and Airbnb hosts considering a brand investment: before you hire a designer or a social media strategist, ask yourself honestly whether your properties can deliver on the promise that marketing will make. If the answer is not yet, start there. Get the maintenance right. Get the communication right. Get the turnover process right. Then amplify.
When those two things are aligned, a brand that promises something real, and an operation that delivers it, the results compound. Better reviews feed the algorithm. Better algorithm placement brings more bookings. More bookings fund better maintenance. And the brand you built keeps getting stronger.
About Char. Design Studio
Char. Design Studio is a brand strategy and creative studio working with hospitality, lifestyle, and real estate clients. We build brands from the ground up; brand identity, content, digital strategy, and the systems that connect them. We don't just make things look good. We make sure the brand can do real work in the world.
If you're a property manager, Airbnb host, boutique hotel, or lifestyle brand ready to build something that lasts, we'd love to talk.
Ready to build your brand the right way?
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