The good news for the hotel industry is that it has gone from being asked, “why are you spending so much money on sustainable initiatives?” to “why aren’t you spending enough money on them?”
It is clear to everyone that it's time to take action. Approaching carbon net-zero targets have brought this into sharper focus.
Where we are seeing a lag in this good work is on the hotel interior fit-out.
It has only really been since COVID-19 that the supply chain has started to take the need to address sustainability seriously.
We’re doing as much as we can, and we'd love to be able to do more.
This isn’t due to a lack of enthusiasm. Dialogue between clients and architects is more open in terms of budget and pricing, which makes it easier to meet expectations and hit targets, but we are sometimes stymied by a lack of truly sustainable supply.
We, and our clients, have very high demands, but there are issues with what is on the market.
For instance, with textiles, when they come from a recycled source, they have different properties. The colors often aren't as bright; the patterns are really hard to find. Many restrictions arise when one is trying to be properly sustainable because the products required aren’t yet available on the market.
The fit-out of hotel space is very difficult to do without using certain types of materials. Glue is not sustainable and using it hampers what can be done to other products at the end of their lifetime. One way around that is by using more sustainably sourced timber, and mechanically fixing things, but the cost of that is prohibitive.
The other side of sustainable building is the origin of the materials.
Studio Moren was working on a hotel in the United Kingdom where the stone cladding was coming from Portugal, but we discovered that it was being shipped all the way to China to be laminated before being sent back to the U.K. That kind of practice is no longer acceptable.
We want to know that the product we’re using is ideally made in the same country, or not too far away, and certainly not coming from halfway around the world, but obtaining the information we need from suppliers remains difficult. BREEAM (sustainability assessment criteria and goals) means that there are better processes in place for the architecture as a piece of work, but we still have to interrogate every single supplier. As well as knowing where the materials come from, we need to know what you can do with it at the end of its life cycle.
With the growth of sustainability, there are many companies seeking to portray themselves as sustainable but who do not stand up under scrutiny.
Recently we came across a company promoting English paints, but all they were doing in England was the tinting. The actual product was still coming from overseas. This sort of behavior is common and makes the process harder.
Ultimately, the dream is to be able to say the whole product is fully recyclable and can have a second life at the end of its first. For the building itself, we have seen the atmosphere evolve at local planning level toward retaining and rejuvenating properties.
We recently won planning permission for a landmark, 355-room hotel in the Waterloo area of London, directly opposite the Grade II-listed Imperial War Museum, on the site of a former budget hotel. At the start of the project, the local authority had been in favor of full demolition, but after producing a completely fresh design solution — including a landmark tower — the sustainability climate had changed, and our approach was lauded.
The decision to retain the existing building reduces significant amounts of construction-carbon emissions, while the redevelopment has been designed to reduce carbon emissions by nearly double those required by building regulation.
We’re getting there, but success means diving deeply into every element of a project.
Not everyone has the appetite, but for those seeking a sustainable property — and investment — it’s the only option.
Dexter Moren is a partner in hotel design firm Studio Moren, where David Harte is co-head of interiors.
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