About Umi

Umi started in hospitality. That matters.

Our view of marketing and technology did not begin with channels, platforms or trends. It began with the reality of running and growing hospitality businesses.

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In hospitality, the guest experience, the commercial model and the operational detail are all connected. That was obvious from the inside long before it became an agency position.

Over time Umi became a marketing partner, then a marketing and technology partner. The thread has stayed the same: long-term relationships with businesses that care about the quality of the guest journey and the commercial systems behind it.

A decade of running platforms for hotels, groups and travel brands has given us a particular vantage point. We see the same commercial questions from inside hotels, agencies, technology vendors and industry bodies — which is a different view from any one of those on its own.

Umi means ocean

The name derives from the Japanese word for sea, and it is pronounced oo-me.

The ocean connects people, places and cultures. Hospitality does the same. The internet now plays a similar role in the guest journey — it connects people to places before they arrive, and it carries the stories, decisions and comparisons that shape what they expect.

Umi sits in that connected space. It is not a metaphor we reach for in a pitch; it is the reason the business is organised the way it is.

Independent, and deeply embedded

Hotel Marketing AssociationBETAGoogle Partner

Owned by the people doing the work

Umi is independently owned by senior leaders within the business. There is no holding company deciding what we are allowed to recommend, and no vendor relationship quietly shaping our advice.

We are also closely involved in the hospitality and hotel marketing community — the Hotel Marketing Association, the British Educational Travel Association, and long-standing relationships across the sector.

That gives us a practical view of what is changing and what stays true. We are not interested in short-term agency theatre. We are interested in sustainable, long-term partnerships with good businesses.

Cross-disciplineLong-term

How we work

We believe the best answers rarely come from one discipline.

Our marketers need to understand technology. Our developers need to understand attribution and guest behaviour. Our content team needs to understand performance. Our strategists need to understand the operational reality of a hotel at 4pm on a Friday.

This is not neat, but it is valuable. Hospitality problems are rarely contained inside one department, and neither are the best solutions.

Members and partners

The team we are building

Our people strategy

If the business is built around connection, the team has to be built around people who can move between disciplines.

Not everyone needs to do everything, and specialism still matters enormously. But the most valuable people are increasingly those with deep skills in one area and enough curiosity to understand the areas around them.

That is becoming more important because the tools are changing so quickly. A broad product set is no longer a weakness if the team knows how to connect it — in many ways it is becoming an advantage.

What that looks like in practice

Writers becoming prompt guardians and creative operators
Designers and retouchers directing AI-assisted visual workflows
Marketers learning enough code to build useful things and to know what is technically possible
Developers who understand tracking, attribution, behaviour and the commercial context behind the work

None of that happens by accident. It needs an environment where people learn across departments rather than only within their own lane — and the useful learning is often the thing that does not look immediately relevant. A marketer understanding how data is structured. A developer understanding why attribution matters. A strategist understanding the operational pressure inside a hotel team.

It is also why time together matters. Remote work can be efficient, but a lot of the most valuable learning happens through proximity: people absorb how others think, overhear the shape of problems, and become more rounded problem-solvers because they are exposed to expertise outside their own role.