Industry News

Good Hotel: A hotel where you can meet, sleep, eat, drink, and do GOOD

Published: 08 Aug 2019

Good Hotel London is a unique 4* floating hotel located at London’s historic Royal Victoria Dock in East London. The hotel is not unique only according to style, but in business model - Good Hotel London donates its profits to education and training projects near and far, meaning all guests can really do some GOOD by using their services. As well as sending its profits to help build schools in some of the world’s poorest communities, Good Hotel London also finds local long-term unemployed people and trains them in-house to get them back to work and independent once again.

Good Hotel guests should expect premium hospitality - but not in a complicated or traditional sense. Guests can count on creative design, clean lines, and spaces that foster fun experiences, teamed with honest service and authenticity. Relax with waterside views all around, and minimalist industrial chic-design to keep things cool and calm.

After ‘popping up’ for a year in Amsterdam and crossing the North Sea to its current home in 2016, Good Hotel London offers 148 rooms including 4 suites, open plan ‘Living Room’ for co-working, food and drink, and a show-stopping rooftop bar with views over the water and beyond.

Meeting and Events:

Host your next meeting or event at Good Hotel London and impress your friends and colleagues knowing that your event directly contributes to a noble social impact mission – Good Hotel profits go to providing education and training to people who really need it.

From private boardroom meetings to product launches, intimate concerts and all-night parties – Good Hotel event planners are on stand-by to customise your upcoming event.

The spaces include:

• S, M, L, XL Private Meeting Spaces (up to 60 people theatre-style)

• The Living Room (intimate sit-down meetings or dinners, or open plan up to 120 people cocktail-style)

• The Globe (intimate sit-down meetings or dinners, or open plan up to 50 people cocktail-style)

• The Rooftop Bar and Terrace (intimate sit-down meetings or dinners, or open plan, up to 120 people cocktail style)

The neighbourhood

Good Hotel is minutes away from world-renowned exhibitions and international convention centre The ExCeL, and a family favourite - The Emirates Air Line cable car link, which flies across the River Thames in London throughout the day and night. Take this short ‘flight’ and you’ll arrive at the O2 entertainment complex on the Greenwich Peninsula. This means Good Hotel is perfectly located for a range of events and show. You can also now explore Up at The O2, an adventure experience made up of a guided climb across the arena roof, with scenic views of landmarks.

Dining

We have plenty of restaurants and bars nearby, but our Good Hotel Living Room bar and dining facilities have lots of delicious options for our guests, including many vegetarian and vegan dishes, and where were can, always local, always sustainable.

Transport

Good Hotel is 15-minutes away from London City Airport and direct travel links to central London.
Royal Victoria – DLR, 5-minute walk
Canning Town – Jubilee Line, 15-minute walk
Recommended as part of your route – Emirates Greenwich Peninsula to Emirates Airline (7 minutes across the Thames by cable car)

Prices

Standard Double rooms average from £89.00 per night depending on availability.

Key features

• 148-room floating hotel including waterside view rooms
• 4 XL suites
• 4-star ****
• Great location with easy underground, DLR and cable car access
• Unique water views over River Thames and London with beautiful rooftop bar
• £5 is donated to our NGO charity partner per booking per night each time you book directly with Good Hotel
• Free WiFi

Contacts

PR: pr@goodhotellondon.com
Sales: sales@goodhotellondon.com
Events: events@goodhotellondon.com
Website: www.goodhotellondon.com (local) www.good.community (global)

- ENDS -

More information including impact, design and further background continued below.



What’s so GOOD about Good Hotels?

The Good Hotel ethos is very simple– with Good Hotels, you can Sleep Good Do Good.

SLEEP GOOD – Every room is cleverly designed to maximise space, style and sleep. Extra comfy beds and fluffy down pillows make catching z’s a dream, and the powerful shower will help wake you up in the morning. Downstairs you’ll find barista-made coffee and plenty of good food that’ll set you up to chill out, explore and meet good people.

DO GOOD - Good Hotel believes in human potential. Good Hotel, we put our profits where the people are and invest in communities around the world. 100% of Good Hotel profits are re-invested into educational projects. Because we operate as a social business - we don’t behave like an ordinary business, where usually most of the profits go into the pockets of shareholders (because we don’t have any!). Instead, all our profits go into the Good Global Foundation and we distribute this across our social good projects, which all seek to provide education, skills and training, to those who really need it.

The Good Global Foundation - Sleeping at the good hotel means your money (our profit) goes to The Good Global Foundation which educates children around the world. You can look at it like this: 1 night’s Good sleep = 1 week of school for a child.

The Good Hotel School
– In addition to the work of the Foundation, Good Training is an innovative in-house training programme developed by the Good Group. In the areas around our hotels, we work with local authorities to identify individuals who have been in long-term unemployment and offer these people, regardless of background, a fresh start. All we ask is that they are motivated and willing to make a change.

Once they have been recruited into the programme, alongside being given the opportunity to be paid to learn the ins-and-outs of the hospitality trade, the focus is on self-development and giving Good Trainees the confidence they need to continue into the working-world long after the programme ends.

After graduating, every student has the chance to work full time at the Good Hotel or with one of our carefully chosen partners. So far, we’ve trained 300+ people, with 70% now still in full time employment.

So there you have it, with us you can #SleepGoodDoGood – stay with us and rest easy knowing that you’re supporting a social business that’s trying to do something GOOD for the world.

The Good Group Philosophy

Taking inspiration from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Good Group aims to showcase a different approach to doing business, we call it SOCIAL BUSINESS. Everything the Good Group does is oriented towards creating human value, for the long term. Financial value is simply a means to that goal. What is important to us is that people are at the heart of all we do, every day.

The Good Group’s portfolio of Good Hotels is the current manifestation of Founder and CEO Marten Dresen's social business vision. Good Hotels are today a successful global lifestyle brand located in the world’s most exciting tourist destinations, creating a unique and premium hospitality experience with a cause. Good Hotel offers its customers beautiful service and stunning settings, alongside an inspiring story and exciting mission. Combining doing business with doing good – Good Hotel puts 100% of its profits into its Good Global Foundation which invests in charitable projects. The Good Global Foundation supports projects that provide education, skills and training, to those who really need it.

Good Hotel currently has permanent hotels in London and Antigua de Guatemala with Rotterdam, Guatemala City, and Amsterdam all on track for opening by 2020.

We’re doing good

Since opening, Good Hotel has donated over $200,000, and we are now structurally working towards being able to donate $500,000 per year to the Good Global Foundation. So far, the Good Global Foundation has helped build schools and helped fund the education of 500+ students in some of the world’s poorest communities.

Our 3-month paid hospitality program for unemployed locals gets results and changes lives. So far, we have had 300 trainees taking part in the Good Training programme, with 72.2% going on into further employment.

Good Hotel CEO and Founder: Marten Dresen

Marten Dresen was born in the Netherlands to a family of teachers, psychologists and public service workers. Service and taking care of others were cornerstones of his upbringing. Business was not part of the equation. Traveling as a student, when the Euro had just launched; he realised the importance of international trade and open markets, to connect people and develop areas left behind. Therefore, he decided to work in international trade. Before starting his career, Marten travelled to Guatemala to learn Spanish.

When in Guatemala, he befriended Mirna, a little girl with no shoes. He decided to give her a pair of shoes and soon realised the only really way to change her current fate, was through education. He founded the NGO Nin~os de Guatemala in 2006, on the belief that education could provide another – better – future for Mirna, her family, her community, and future generations. Marten built a self-sufficient NGO business by stimulating entrepreneurship and focussing on long-term change and creating independency.

After graduating, and while growing the NGO Nin~os de Guatemala, Marten started working in an international shipping company. In 2009, at the age of 26, the company asked him to head up the South America business in Rio de Janeiro. While based in Brazil, Marten continued to manage part-time the growing NDG team in Guatemala. Through the learning’s gained at Nin~os de Guatemala, and with the Olympics being awarded to Rio de Janeiro, Marten saw an opportunity to link education, job creation and entrepreneurship to tourism demand. And the potential this could bring to under-developed communities. In 2012, he decided to found the Good Group, and handed over the management of the NGO to a board of directors. In 2013, he quit his job in shipping to dedicate himself full-time to the Good Group. Three years later, the first Good Hotel started welcoming guests and continues to donate and support Nin~os de Guatemala every day through The Good Global Foundation.


Posted by: Good Hotel London

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