Photo by Derek Redd Scott MacMillan of GlobalMind Solutions talks to employees of Oglebay Park Resort at Wilson Lodge on Friday.

A new name, logo and color palette for Oglebay were unveiled on Friday as part of the park’s rebrand focused on brand and service culture enhancements at the hilltop destination.

Wheeling Park Commission President and CEO Bob Peckenpaugh said the park’s rebrand aims to garner national and international recognition while maintaining its roots in the area.

“When you think of Nemacolin or Callaway Gardens, you think of these great regional resorts,” Peckenpaugh said on Friday.

“They’ve created a name and brand that extends beyond themselves. We’re known in the Ohio Valley, Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh, but we want to be known beyond those borders.”

With the rebrand has come a new moniker for the park: “Oglebay Park Resort.”

Peckenpaugh said adding “Resort” to the name was a callback to the Wheeling Park Commissioners gifting the resort to the public in the 1950s.

“Park” was kept at the center of the name so Oglebay “does not forget its roots.”

“In the past, Oglebay was called ‘Oglebay Convention Resort,’ and we do not want to hide the park in our name,” Peckenpaugh said. “We want to celebrate our roots as a park and how we serve people. The resort is really the financial driving mechanism of the parks, so we wanted to lean into both the resort and park in the new name.”

Oglebay’s emblematic logo, which has a tree sprouting from the “l” in the word, has also been changed for the first time in 50 years as part of the rebrand. The tree has now been removed from “Oglebay” and sits beside the word in a separate “O” shape, which will now be Oglebay’s “brand mark.”

According to Director of Brand Activation Lindsey Scripture, the logo’s font was also changed to a “more modern font,” and the letters were realigned.

“It’s no major change; we’re not reidentifying who we are,” Scripture said. “We’re just celebrating who we are in a different, more modern way.”

Oglebay’s signature hunter-green brand color, which was worn by employees throughout the park, has been shifted to a lighter, more earth-toned shade of green. Peckenpaugh said the lighter green was chosen to replicate the “colors of nature” within the park.

“The new color palette better aligns with the natural world around us,” Scripture said. “A large element of the visual component of the brand focuses on celebrating the beauty around us. Sometimes, if you’re from the Wheeling community, you can become blind to the natural beauty around you, so we will continue to celebrate that as part of the brand.”

Visitors to the park will see these branding changes reflected physically through new signage and employee uniforms. All customer-facing employees at Oglebay will now sport navy blue shirts, and all customer-facing employees at Wheeling Park will sport light green shirts.

A new park website will be launched in early summer. Peckenpaugh said the website will make information more accessible to guests in a “much more aesthetically pleasing way.”

Scripture added that from an online booking standpoint, the website would be more user-friendly.

“The website will be a transformational change to how we conduct business with guests,” Scripture noted. “Guests will be able to buy gift cards online, book spa appointments and perhaps buy memberships.”

In addition to physical branding changes, the rebrand is reinventing Oglebay’s “service culture.” Scripture said new service standards were being introduced to employees to impart the idea they are “part of a legacy” at the park and “building the new generation of Oglebay-Wheeling Park guests.”

As part of the park’s new service culture, employees will now be called “hosts” to reinforce the park’s commitment to hospitality. Peckenpaugh said he did not want employees to think of themselves as “just another staff member or employee” but instead view themselves as “hosts welcoming guests into their home.”

“We want employees to feel like this is their home and that they have the ability to do whatever they need to take care of our guests,” Peckenpaugh said. “The idea is that everybody’s a host, even if you’re a sales manager in Pittsburgh telling people about Oglebay and saying, ‘Come to my home.'”

With this new “host” label, all employees will undergo training to align with the park’s new service standards and ensure consistency across all departments. Peckenpaugh said this would be the first large-scale service culture training for employees in more than 40 years.

On Friday, Oglebay staff gathered at the park’s Engagement Rally to learn how their role within the park would be transformed. Scripture said that over the next three weeks, employees would undergo two four-hour brand-training sessions that would allow employees to “dive deeply” into the new service levels the park will provide.

“We believe our employees are the brand,” Scripture said. “They’re the way that we express our brand every single day to our guests. We wanted to start these brand updates at the frontline of our employees and allow them to understand how we want to present service as we go forward.”

As employees are trained and new signage is erected at the park, Peckenpaugh said these changes would complement recent renovations and updates. Last year, Oglebay’s Wilson Lodge underwent a $12.5 million renovation that added new restaurants and upgraded the entrance of the building.

“We want to make sure that we’re presenting ourselves in a way that would appeal to the entire United States and internationally,” Peckenpaugh said. “We’d love to have people visiting from all over to celebrate us for who we are and what we have to offer here at the park.”