A floating hotel that aims to help long-term unemployed people get back into work is to open in London this autumn. The Good Hotel will take up a berth in Newham’s Royal Docks in September, after being transported across the North Sea from its current base in Amsterdam with the help of tug boats and a submerged barge.
The 148-room hotel, built on a large floating platform, opened in Amsterdam in June 2015 as a pop-up social enterprise project. Among its aims is to give opportunities to local people who have struggled to find employment and are receiving welfare support.
One third of the staff in Amsterdam (18 people) come from this background; they are taken on for a 10-month placement that includes training and working in the hotel, and then helped to find long-term work through the hotel’s partners. As one group graduates, a new intake is employed, a model which will be repeated in London, although this time trainees will be taken on for shorter, 3-month placements.
Those who join the team come from a variety of backgrounds: it could be a young mother who has fallen off the career ladder or a teenager who didn’t finish school; someone who lost their job in the recession or someone with a criminal record. As Jos de Groot, director of operations at the Good Hospitality Group says: “They all need a second chance.”
The training programme in Amsterdam has been such a success that it will continue even after the hotel has gone, with the group making plans to open a permanent home in a converted industrial warehouse in the city. Meanwhile, new applicants will be found to staff the hotel in London, where the project is to stay for five years.
The Good Hotel London will have an external makeover, which will include a green roof inspired by New York’s High Line that will be open to the public.
The Good Hospitality Group was founded in 2012 by Dutch entrepreneur Marten Dresen. As well as hotels in London and Amsterdam, it also has plans to open a 30-room boutique property in Antigua, where Dresen was first inspired to start the company. The group hopes to open eight further hotels around the world by 2020.
More social enterprises for travellers
A hotel with a conscience
The Magdas Hotel in Vienna – staffed by refugees – opened in May 2015 to provide jobs and training while also making a political statement about Austria’s restrictions on asylum seekers being able to work. Meanwhile, the Grandhotel Cosmopolis in Augsburg, Germany, which opened in 2013, reserves a number of rooms for asylum seekers.
Social city tours
A new breed of city tours is taking a similar approach. In 2010, Unseen Tours set up in London, offering guided tours led by homeless people. The concept has proved popular; when it launched around 400 people were signing up for tours each year, now the number is 3,000. The idea has since spread to other cities, inspiring Lisa Grace to found Hidden City Tours in Barcelona three years later.
Conscious dining
There has also been a number of new socially conscious dining projects, such as London’s Mazi Mas. The nomadic restaurant, that runs regular pop-ups and residencies, showcases the culinary skills of migrant women, who previously would only have the opportunity to cook in their homes.
• This article was amended on 30 June to update details about the number of rooms in The Good Hotel and the length of placements for trainees.
