Published on : Wednesday, July 17, 2019
“Hotels are often internationally owned, and often times filled with people who are quite far removed from the local setting,” said the hotel’s founder, Marten Dresen.
“They mostly serve people who are not local to them.”
Growing numbers of people are now traveling, with 1.4 billion international tourists last year according to United Nations data. It is equal to the population of China, with travel becoming cheaper and easier.
However, locals often complain about overcrowding in popular sites, pollution caused by cruise ships or increasing rents driven up by tourists paying more for accommodation via sites like Airbnb.
London’s container-like Good Hotel started out as a confinement center for unlawful immigrants in the Netherlands before becoming a pop-up hotel in Amsterdam in 2015 and then moved to London in 2016 to its new home.
Located in East London’s Royal Docks, where ships unloaded their cargo a century ago, the 148-room Good Hotel invests all of its profits in training and education to generate jobs and opportunities for locals in one of the city’s poorest areas.
“The more we grow as a business, the more we can reinvest,” said Dresen, who runs a similar Good Hotel in Antigua, with a scheme to train and hire single mothers and provide apprenticeships for local schools.
London’s Good Hotel sources food and drink locally where possible, offers Newham residents a 20% discount in its bar and restaurant, and hosts open bar events for them from time to time.
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