Platform on new construction, renovation, restoration and transformation
The hotel was given a thousand-and-one-night style and has two restaurants, several meditation rooms and 103 rooms: one 180 m2 presidential suite with its own sauna, Jacuzzi and steam room, 32 suites and seventy luxury rooms. Through a tunnel, guests can pass inside to the wellness complex. Project Manager Corné Vreugdenhil of Van Norel Bouwgroep looks back with satisfaction on the course of the project. "It went smoothly, as we are used to with this client," he says. "Earlier, we also built the adjacent wellness resort with the same construction team. It has become a beautiful five-star hotel with the allure we envisioned."
The building is expected to be awarded BREEAM certification Excellent. Partly because of the installation and material choices that have been made, such as solar panels, thermal (seasonal) buffer storage, a high-quality thermal shell and economical showerheads and toilets. Another important aspect for the certification is the extensive dossier creation including administrative performance statements, a trip log and a sustainable design of the construction site.
The shell of the hotel consists of hollow walls, full precast concrete walls, sand-lime brick, wood frame construction, wide slab floors and hollow-core slabs. The shell was initially designed in full precast concrete, but this proved unfeasible within the available budget. Therefore, the construction team came up with alternatives and a mix of materials was chosen. The quality remained guaranteed and, at the bottom line, this resulted in significant cost savings.
Although construction went smoothly as mentioned, it still became a fairly hectic process in the finishing touches, Vreugdenhil says. "The hotel industry steers by the latest trends. A lot had been thought of and designed beforehand. If things were modified, it was our job to try to weave that in. Due to the long lead time of the preliminary process, some materials or color finishes were no longer available, for example. Another material or color just didn't match the wall finish or the color of doors and window frames. So things had to be changed. Changes in the interior also affected our work: for example, wall sockets were moved while the walls were already finished. Only then could the interior decorator and painter continue. This all went in good harmony, by the way, and now that everything is ready, it turns out that these were good choices after all and that it worked out very well."
The client's concept is to offer wellness with a hotel. Some of the existing wellness resorts do not yet have a hotel, so Vreugdenhil hopes to continue the partnership. "We see no reason why not. They we previously expanded the sauna complex at hotel Bussloo for this client. I am proud that we are working on such beautiful, high-quality projects."
