View from the Summit

What if Forbes Travel Guide—the go-to reference for top-rated hotel, spa and dining properties—became a luxury brand in its own right? In pursuit of this vision for the guide’s forthcoming 60th anniversary, Marc Friedland transformed the event’s prestigious annual summit into precisely that. Renamed Verified, Forbes Travel Guide Luxury Summit, after a word in the guide’s tagline, “We verify luxury,” the summit gained a new look, broader focus, and wider reach. An elegant photograph of a length of fabric, creating a mystique around the unveiling of a new look, became the summit’s central image.

Beyond bringing renewed attention to Verified, the new name and identity support the parent company’s long-range plans to enter new vertical markets without needing to rely exclusively on the Forbes name for cachet.