With locally produced food and electricity, refurbished furniture and re-used building materials, Lugnåsberget Ekohotell offers a truly sustainable experience – without cutting down on quality.
Lugnåsberget Ekohotell (Eco Hotel) has received multiple awards for its sustainability work. Photo: Stefan Svensson
In a series of articles published on our Climate Dialogue page on We Don’t Have Time, the municipality of Mariestad aims to highlight local companies and entrepreneurs that take great climate action to reduce emissions and make their businesses more sustainable. This time, we’ll take a closer look at Lugnåsberget Ekohotell (Eco Hotel), a lovely spot surrounded by forests, walking trails and grazing sheep, 15 kilometers southwest of central Mariestad.
Owners Jesper Persson and Pia Åkesson happened to see the “For Sale” sign outside the property back in 2010, and decided to pursue their long-standing dream of opening up a hostel.
To save money as well as planetary resources, they re-used a lot of building material and bought most of the furniture second-hand. That did not mean cutting down on quality.
”We wanted to have a good standard from the start, so we chose to install toilets and showers in each room, which is not very common in hostels”, says Jesper Persson.
Jesper Persson and Pia Åkesson are the founders and owners of Lugnåsberget Ekohotell outside Mariestad in Sweden. Photo: Stefan Svensson
This proved to be a wise move. Already during its first year on the market, Lugnåsberget was voted best Swedish hostel of the year.
In 2019 Jesper and Pia took the next big step, transforming Lugnåsberget from a hostel to a hotel, while still making sure to keep the eco profile.
A few examples: Triple glass windows and low-flow faucets in all rooms keeps heating costs and water consumption down. The rooftop solar panels produce enough electricity to power the facilities from May until October. The hotel also has its own biological waste-water treatment plant, as well as waste separation and recycling bins available for all guests.
Locally produced breakfast baskets are served to all guests, who also have the option of preordering dinner made from locally sourced, ecological ingredients. Guests are also allowed to cook their own meals in the fully equipped guest kitchen.
”Our hotel is situated a bit aside from everything else. By offering this service, our guests don’t need to take the car into town”, says Jesper Persson.
Should the guests want to head into town anyway, but in a more sustainable manner, the hotel has bicycles for rent.
To raise awareness among their guests, Jesper and Pia have put a display right outside the hotel front door, showing how much electricity is currently generated from the solar panels. In each of the rooms there are small information signs letting the guests know what measures have been taken to keep the carbon footprint down, and also – in a nice way – informing them what they could do to help reduce it further.
A counter on the wall displays the current electricity effect generated from the rooftop solar panels.
”We are trying to create awareness in a very friendly and encouraging manner, and we get lot of credit from our guests for doing so. When writing in our hotel guest book, many of our guests commend our sustainability work”, says Jesper Persson.
Does this mean that the hotel’s focus on sustainability attracts more customers than it would otherwise have done?
”We haven’t been able to measure it in a good way, but we really think it does”, says Jesper Persson.
Read our previous articles in the series:
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57 w
A reason to visit Mariestad!
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113 w
Will definitely stay there when visiting Mariestad or the area
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113 w
Fantastic. Would love to stay there with my family on my next visit to Mariestad.
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113 w
Incredible!! Definitely on the list to visit.
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113 w
Lugnåsberget Ekohotell sets a great example for the hotel industry! Congratulations 👏