On the recent trip to London to see Ed Sheeran, Alison (my wife) had booked us into a hotel a mile away from the O2.
Unfortunately geography is not her strongest point (she is good at many, many things but not geography!) and that mile to the O2 was entirely across a body of water called the Thames. So not the easiest place to get to.
The reason she’d done this though is that she’d found a hotel online called The Good Hotel. It turns out that this is a floating barge that has been towed across the North Sea from Amsterdam where it sat for a year as a hotel in the Docks there before being transferred to the Royal Victoria Dock in East London.There are many good things about the Good Hotel. It’s a social enterprise and a total not for profit – 100% of its profits are reinvested. 30% of its staff are long term non-employed from the local area being trained and recycled back into employment in other hotel chains but it’s also a modern example of minimalism and reminding you of how much you actually need instead of how much you actually want. When Alison was in the shower the next morning I measured the room using only my height as a guide. It’s 9ft wide by about 16ft long (and that includes the toilet and shower). It’s a cupboard or a box with an outward opening door which is something almost like a steel safe or a door from a submarine. The door into the toilet doubles as a shower door. It fits a double bed (which is comfortable) It doesn’t have any amenities in it like hairdryers or irons or anything like that, if you want those you go to reception where they store them. It makes you not want them. It has a tiny bit of storage and a kettle, it doesn’t have a TV but it does have Wi-Fi.
It has the story of the hotel and the company that runs it on the wall downstairs in what’s called ‘the living room’. It has a really cool minimalist bar and everybody or almost everybody that checks in there understands the concept and embraces it. That means that you’re surrounded by people that think the same way you do and a little tribe of, what I suppose is, modern minimalism in the shadow of Canary Wharf. It’s working too, it opened in December and it’s busy. It seems really good and they have a lease at the dock until 2021 where after that I guess they’ll move it somewhere else.The staff were brilliant, really engaged and really upbeat. The guy kept the bar open a little bit late because he saw us come in from the concert.
So the point of this is that it’s possible to be good and to be great. Do a good thing and have a great business. Why are we all not thinking like this because it’s coming to the time when we’ll have to.The second point is, if you’re in the East End of London going to ExCel or the O2 then book it and go there. Forget DoubleTree by Hilton or Radisson Blu, pick the guys who are investing back into the local infrastructure because that’s the right thing to do.
Blog Post Number - 1275
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