Hotels Building Local Community
Every boutique hotel brand seeks a credible bond to the community around it. It can either be an effort to attract the local customer for staycation; or it could be that the linens it uses are from a local supplier, sourced sustainably. It could even be the staff it hires and develops. Alas, very often, initiatives like these come off as contrived and shallow.
Take Good Hotel Antigua for example. At a glance, it seems like a solid, serviceable boutique hotel usually booked for a casual stay while you are visiting the island. It will take a closer look into its small and deliberate "moments of truth" for the brand's true mission to be revealed.
The Good Hotels brand is a series of boutique hotels in London, Antigua, Guatemala and a pop-up experiment in Amsterdam focused on detailed community impact. This is not just a PR campaign, it's change with substance.
All of the staff at the hotel in Guatemala are single mothers from the local community. Proceeds for room's revenue are dedicated to kids of low-income families living in the mountain villages around Antigua.
They operate by investing all profits back to training. The Good Training program offers long-term unemployed locals a custom-made hospitality training course and the chance to build a new future.
All in all, Good Hotel combines premium hospitality with doing good for the local community. It's a concept that should be followed by the sector of hospitality since it's the most sincere way of giving back to the community.
PS: Good Hotel London was transported from Amsterdam, where it popped up for a year in 2015, and is now continuing its social mission in London.