The Wall of Change is a unique communication project to promote sustainable tourism/hotels. The wall motivates guests and colleagues to act more sustainably in a special way. It represents the more than 230 sustainability measures we have implemented based on psychological principles and an unusual design. The high transparency and simple and clear descriptions make it easy to copy, scale and imitate the measures.
It consists of a digital version on luise.eco and an analogue version in the hotel.
A detailed description of the project can be found here:

The Wall of Change – step by step to the circular hotel

Projects such as our circular hotel rooms have made us, the Hotel Luise, a flagship company for sustainability in the hotel industry. We have stood for compatible & holistically sustainable management since the 1980s. On our way to becoming a model company, we have gained a lot of valuable experience and have continued to develop (not only) in terms of sustainability. With our Wall of Change, we not only want to illustrate the high-profile projects, but above all to make visible the many, many invisible measures that have brought us to where we are today. We want to make these accessible to other companies and interested parties in order to save them detours and mistakes that we had to make on our journey on their own way to a greener future. We want to encourage imitation by providing our knowledge & experience. Our personal goal is to become the “circular hotel” and thus prove that it is absolutely possible to harmonize the three components of people, nature and (economic) resources.

Our personal goal is to become the “circular hotel” (…)

We have implemented more than 230 individual measures in our company in the name of sustainability. These projects are publicly presented on the Wall of Change, evaluated and, in the best case, reproduced by other companies With our project, we aim for a broad network with partners and other companies, which can produce a network of innovative, compatible concepts through the professional exchange and the accumulation of knowledge and experience of many participants. In addition, we would also like to encourage individuals to make their everyday lives more sustainable. Many of our measures can also be transferred to the private environment.

But not only the practical, but also the emotional aspect is an important pillar of the concept in order to pick up our guests at the right point: Today’s guests – and even more so those of tomorrow – no longer define their hotel stay in terms of purely material values, but in terms of emotions and worlds of experiencethat unfold for him.
For us, it goes without saying that these worlds of experience must not be created at the expense of other people, nature or finite resources, but on the contrary must bring them into harmony with each other. Worlds of experience should make the cycle concept, which we strive for as a hotel, tangible and couple it with emotional values ​​for the guests.
Based on existing concepts such as the three pillars of sustainability, the cradle-to-cradle principle and the economy for the common good, the idea of ​​the “circular hotel” is about the basic principles of a self-sustaining ecosystem: The “circular hotel” knows no waste, it only knows resources.

The “circular hotel” knows no waste, it only knows resources.

The “circular hotel” knows no resource consumption, it only knows resource use. It wasn’t just our “circular hotel rooms”, which were developed entirely according to the cradle-to-cradle principle, that got us on this path. This defines a consistent circular economy in product design, which requires that all materials that make up a product can be returned to nature or reused to manufacture a new product. Due to this orientation, our “circular hotel rooms” represent the starting point of our journey to the “circular hotel”. As such, we would like to develop into an incubator of a sustainable type of sustainable business.

The circular hotel room at the Hotel Luise

By bundling our measures up to the overall concept “circular Hotel”, we want to establish resource efficiency as a model for success. By involving all target groups, we position ourselves as a place where sustainable corporate management can be experienced and use the marketing of our personal philosophy to prove to others that our corporate concept is a successful model for the future. The history of our hotel, which illustrates the success of our consistent thinking and acting, is the best proof of this. But of course we will not rest on our laurels in the future either, but will constantly question our existing measures and add new approaches to them in order to consistently develop further.

Project components

In order to reduce the complexity of this project somewhat, we divided the project into three sub-areas.

1. SUBSTANCE: The more than 230 sustainability measures form the foundation of the Wall of Change. They are all tested tools curated by us in our sustainability concept. We do not want to claim completeness, nor do we want to suggest that it was always the only & best solution. However, all the solutions presented have proven to be successful in our case.

2. DOCUMENTATION: Before these many projects can actually be communicated, careful documentation is necessary. It creates both transparency and real informal added value when certain parameters are specified. For this we have decided on the following points: The project period, as some projects are in the past or are still being implemented. The partners to provide imitators with potential connections and practical solutions directly. The SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals of the UN) to clarify the impact of the projects on the corresponding fields of action. And of course a short description of the most important challenges or building blocks.

3. COMMUNICATION: An innovative concept is required to bundle these many projects in a clear manner. The hotel used to have a long list, then a mind map to represent the projects. But from our point of view, that was too factual, too unemotional and didn’t do justice to the urge to discover something new. This is how the idea of ​​the Wall of Change came about.
This not only exists as a digital website, but also exists physically in the hotel lobby. The headings of the individual measures were engraved on pieces of wood and then placed on a wall. This creates a visually very appealing installation that arouses the curiosity of all guests. Inspired by the leaves of a tree, all very similar when viewed from a distance, up close you can discover something new in each leaf. The leaves move in the wind, which reinforces the impression of an organic structure. A small text containing a link draws attention to the digital Wall of Change, where interested parties can find all further information. This on-site wall is considered an emotional “entry point” that is intended to arouse interest in order to then visit the digital Wall of Change.

Regional lasered wooden leaves for the Wall of Change
Lasered wooden sheets
Wall of Change with all sustainability measures
Wall of Change in the lobby

How does our project differ from others, what is innovative about our approach?

On the one hand, the “Wall of Change” offers a simple way for all target groups to find out about successfully applied sustainability measures, both on site, haptically and tangibly, but also digitally and thus accessible to everyone at any time from anywhere. On the other hand, it is characterized by the fact that the measures shown are not just recommendations or a collection of ideas, but actually implemented projects and concepts that have proven to be successful in practice. Thus, it not only serves as a source of inspiration, but also combines it with the experiences that have already been made with the individual ideas. In case of doubt, we spare others the trial-and-error principle, according to which new and innovative approaches often have to be tested and which often represents a barrier to dealing with alternative concepts in the interests of sustainability. This makes it easier for our ideas to be adopted and thus increases the imitation rate.
In this way, we hope to make many other companies as committed as we are.
The circular hotel, which we are striving to achieve through our project, is a unique concept to date. As far as we know, we are the first hotel ever to try to combine a technical concept (cradle-to-cradle) with the principles of sustainability and environmental psychology. All individual measures and sub-projects are placed in a holistic context on this basis. The development of our worlds of experience for guests is also based on the principle of holism. We rely on psychological concepts such as biophilic design, nudging and reciprocity.
The circular hotel, which we see as a vision, combines many sustainable ideas and approaches. A comprehensive communication concept in the form of the “Wall of Change”, which summarizes all of these and reduces their complexity, makes them accessible and understandable for everyone. This is the only way we can get others enthusiastic about our ideas and encourage them to imitate them.
The “Wall of Change” is also intended to make small measures visible that would otherwise go unnoticed. However, it is precisely these that can be imitated more easily than the large-scale projects that are often advertised.

Here is a detailed description of the Wall of Change.

Implementation period: Since 2022

Partner:
Fa. birke und partner
Holz Frank

SDGs: 4,13