PERSONALITIES
IS THERE A
PLACE for
IDEALISM ?
KATHERINE LO ’ S EATON WORKSHOP WILL TEST THE IDEA OF MIXING
SOCIAL ADVOCACY WITH PROFITABLE HOTELKEEPING .
By JEFF WEINSTEIN , EDITOR IN CHIEF
Does advocacy for progressive social change mix with hotel development and branding ? We are about to find out with activist-hotelier Katherine Lo ’ s brave and some would say very much on-trend Eaton Workshop , just opening its first properties in Hong Kong and Washington , D . C .
“ A hotel can be a model to move slowly toward the world that we want ,” says Lo , president and founder of the concept , who is harnessing her interests and experiences in activism , anthropology and film toward this new enterprise that goes much further than typical corporate social responsibility and LEED certification initiatives .
“ With the U . S . election , and also what ’ s happening in Europe and in Asia , when people feel that they need to speak up for what ’ s right , I think that passion and drive is a lot more pronounced and urgent in the last few years than it has been for a long time ,” says Lo , who has attended the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Accord , has been a delegate for Greenpeace and more recently trekked to executive produce a documentary on resistance against the oil pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in the Dakotas . “ So I ’ m inspired by seeing what ’ s happened around the world ... I believe in building positive models to reflect or move slowly toward the world that we want . And funnily , I guess strangely , a hotel could be that model , even though people don ' t typically think of them that way .”
THE EATON IDEAL Eaton Workshop ties together content creation , holistic wellness , a co-working members club and an emphasis on social and environmental good inside a comfortable , high-design hotel gathering place for “ for an inclusive tribe of change makers and creatives .”
The D . C . hotel will have 209 hotel rooms , a radio station , a 50-person cinema , a wellness center with yoga , meditation and alternative treatments , a coffee shop and
18 hotelsmag . com October 2018