It’s rare for a marketing leader to enter a business and be given licence to completely rebrand in their first year, but that was the opportunity facing Center Parcs CMO Sara Holt.

The short-break holiday operator is unveiling a new brand purpose and platform, part of what Holt describes as a “transformational” moment for the business, aimed at “reigniting love and passion” for the brand.

“It’s very rare that you join as a CMO and have the opportunity to completely rebrand a business,” Holt says. “That is what we are doing.”

Launching today (17 December), Center Parcs’ new brand platform ‘For the center of your world’ represents a “step change” in how the business presents itself to existing and future guests.

The platform debuts with a new TV campaign, ‘Bubbles’, created in partnership with creative agency Neverland. The campaign will run across TV, cinema and TikTok in the UK and Ireland from this weekend.

However, Holt is clear the work goes beyond advertising. The platform is underpinned by a new brand purpose – ‘We build better worlds’ – which she says is intended to act as a unifying idea across the entire organisation, rather than purely a marketing initiative.

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Holt joined Center Parcs in March in a newly created CMO role, following a restructure that split the former chief sales and marketing officer position into two: chief commercial officer and chief marketing officer.

While the business has performed strongly in recent years, Holt says early diagnosis when she first joined the business revealed signs of declining brand health that could have posed longer-term risks if left unaddressed.

“It was really clear to me very early on that [Center Parcs] had an incredible story to tell,” she says. “But they hadn’t been doing a great job of telling that story, despite being incredibly successful.”

Lots of CMOs come in and they change everything. This has been done with careful interviews of all of the senior stakeholders. It’s been done with the depth and rigour of a whole army of people behind us.

Sara Holt, Center Parcs

One factor, Holt argues, was that the brand had started to conform too closely to the “tropes” of the category.

“Our advertising was starting to look like everyone else’s,” she says. “Lots of other brands were doing similar things, including Airbnb, which even ran an ad set in a forest. When you look at the data and competitor activity together, it was clear we needed to do something different.”

At the same time, Center Parcs had appointed a new board and the CEO had sharpened the company’s strategic ambitions, after what Holt describes as frustration with previous “slowness”.

“It was a moment that we needed to really reignite passion and love for the brand,” she says. “Because of that, it all just came together and in my first few weeks as part of onboarding, [it was clear] we needed to really elevate a story to drive better, significant growth.”

Defining purpose

As part of her initial review, Holt found that while Center Parcs had brand values, there was little shared understanding of what they meant in practice.

“There were brand values, but no one could really tell me what they were,” she says. “So one of the first things we needed to address was what our purpose is and what we stand for.”

The result was the new brand purpose, which according to Holt is designed to act as a “unifying call to action” about what Center Parcs is, rather than just a piece of advertising.

“We build better worlds for our guests. We build better worlds for our employees. We build better worlds for the environment,” she explains.

However, Holt is adamant this isn’t the case of a new CMO joining and “imposing the purpose” on people.

“We conducted around 25 in-depth stakeholder interviews. The entire board, village directors and sustainability leaders were interviewed – it’s literally come from the distillation of all the brilliant-ness that’s in the business,” she explains.

The process was deliberately rigorous to ensure longevity.

“Lots of CMOs come in and they change everything,” she says. “This has been done with careful interviews of all of the senior stakeholders. It’s been done with the depth and rigour of a whole army of people behind us.”

‘For the center of your world’

The campaign launching today debuts with a film that begins with a bubble squeezing through the front door of a woodland lodge, before floating through a Center Parcs village.

As the story unfolds, bubbles explore the forest, facilities and activities associated with a Center Parcs break. The spot ends with a family welcoming a new arrival into their group, their bubble expanding as they embrace.

The bubble motif will also feature across an OOH campaign launching alongside the film, with activity continuing into 2026. Media plans include large-scale placements and takeovers across the UK and Ireland, including a takeover of Oxford Street Underground station.

Directed by BAFTA-winner Fred Scott, the film features a re-recording of Somewhere from the musical West Side Story, which will be released as a single across streaming platforms.

Center Parcs will also launch a series of shorter social films featuring three different families experiencing “bubble moments” during their stays. These will be supported by platform-specific creative across Snap, Meta and TikTok. In the run-up to Christmas, the brand is also planning “significant” PR activity and influencer partnerships.

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Neverland was appointed to the creative account in May, following a competitive pitch. Co-founder Simon Massey says the creative idea was rooted in consumer insight.

“In our pitch, we recognised that Center Parcs has incredibly loyal customers and a very high rebooking rate,” Massey says. “But if you’ve never been, you might assume it’s expensive, crowded, or that everything is under the dome and it’s all water slides, based on previous communication.”

The campaign, he explains, is designed to broaden understanding of what a Center Parcs break actually offers, which is “being in the forest, getting away from the day to day and reconnecting with family”.

Tackling price perceptions

That perception of price remains a key challenge for the brand and one Holt is keen to address.

“People often say Center Parcs is expensive,” Holt acknowledges. “We have a whole load of brand equity measures that we are looking to move that we have never moved, that have been in decline.”

Holt believes improving brand health will ultimately support the business’s ability to sustain premium pricing.

“That will lead to a better long-term brand health and an ability to charge more premium prices,” she explains.

That messaging is aligned with significant investment across the business. Last week Center Parcs was granted planning permission to construct a £450m park on a 1,000-acre site in the Scottish Borders.

Meanwhile, in the 12 weeks to 17 July 2025, Center Parcs reported revenue of £146.8m, up from £135.6m in the same period last year, with occupancy at 98.5%.

“We’re making the villages more premium,” she says. “The communication is needed to live up to the amount we’re spending on the villages and show that elevated, and premium price promise.”

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While rebooking rates remain high, Holt says the business must work harder to attract new guests and younger generations.

“We’re heavily reliant on repeat bookers,” she says. “But there are younger audiences who are rejecting us. People drop out when their kids get older. We need to keep attracting new people in to maintain occupancy over time.”

Strengthening brand distinctiveness is central to that ambition, particularly in an increasingly crowded leisure and travel market.

“There’s a huge amount of generic category advertising out there, from Airbnb to Booking.com,” Holt says. “We have to bring it back to what is unique to us. That’s what we really focused on – the trees, the nature, that moment in your family bubble.”

Success will be measured through improvements to brand equity metrics, particularly around social responsibility, sustainability and perceptions of value.

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Looking ahead to 2026, Holt says personalisation at scale is one of her top priorities.

“We’ve got a number of different segments we want to build out truly personalised journeys. So we’ll be working on how we build that personalisation for these premium leisure guests all of next year,” she adds.

Center Parcs has also been building out its senior marketing leadership team in recent months with three new hires – Sarah Vickery, Stuart O’Neill and Gillian Blair. Each will take up a new role leading different capabilities across customer experience, creative and media planning.

Looking ahead, for both Holt and Massey the rebrand is about ensuring Center Parcs’ story matches both its heritage and future ambitions.

“The platform really is about ensuring that everything that we do as Center Parcs is in service of helping our guests to find the centre of their world. Beyond it just being a line at the end of an ad, it’s got some real strategic weight behind it,” adds Massey.