The Australian entrepreneur behind China’s first carbon neutral hotel is hoping the success of his project will be the start of many more to come writes Sophie Loras.

When the 26-room boutique URBN Hotel opened its thick wooden doors to a narrow tree-lined street in Shanghai in May 2008, its Australian owner and developer could not have envisaged that within three months his hotel would be already turning away patrons for lack of room.

Jules Kwan is no newcomer to China, and no newcomer to success. With a background in advertising, his previous ventures in China have included the founding of successful media business Mailman Ltd.

His latest venture, Space Development, with American business partner Scott Barrack was formed to convert old factories and warehouses into offices. URBN Hotel & Resorts is the business’s first luxury development and the plaudits continue to roll. Most recently, URBN took out the Sustainable Development award at the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce’s Australia China Business Awards. And before the hotel’s official opening in May last year, it had already secured a place on Conde Nast Traveler’s “Hot Hotels 2008” list.

URBN claims to be China’s first carbon neutral hotel, but the hotel’s charm extends well beyond the environmental credentials.

Developed from a renovated former 1970s post office building, the hotel’s interiors use recycled and locally sourced materials including reclaimed hardwoods and bricks from old French Concession buildings in Shanghai and floorboards and tiles from Suzhou.

"We don’t have the money or the resources that five-star hotels have so we don’t want to compete with the bling,” says Kwan.

Instead the hotel boasts creative and novel characteristics in its décor. The walls of the lobby area for example are made from a collection of leather suitcases, while the tiling for the bathroom walls is made from the recycled tile roofing of demolished lane-houses.

From an environmental perspective, the development incorporates passive solar shades and water based air conditioning systems and every aspect of the running of the hotel is incorporated into calculating its carbon footprint – all the way down to how staff commute to and from work.

While Kwan is the first to admit the hotel is not completely carbon free – it still remains the first of its kind in China.

"To be completely carbon free we would need to be regenerating within the compound,” says Kwan. To reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint to zero, URBN has partnered with Emissions Zero to offset its emissions.

"It’s a global step and every step counts,” says Kwan.

Sustainable buildings have been something Kwan and his team have tried to incorporate into all the design, material and products of the hotel.

"The ethos was to establish and build a development that was as pro-environmental as possible. It took quite a lot of time because no-one had done it before,” says Kwan who now plans to develop his own green hotel initiative in the hope others will follow the lead.

"We have had to educate staff and ourselves on what carbon neutral means. We’ve created a lot of noise on this and that’s how we want to do business and clean things up.”

Over the next five years, URBN aims to develop an additional 10 hotels and resorts focused on delivering holistic, sustainable experiences with discussions in the pipeline for developments in Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Hong Kong.

"There’s been a huge amount of interest in it,” says Kwan.

The marketing value has also been a big bonus for URBN. And while interest from big overseas publications such as Wallpaper and the New York Times hasn’t come as that much of a surprise to Kwan,  it has been the interest from smaller, less well known ones that has.

"It has been surprisingly good to be contacted by design and architecture magazines as far away as Greece – that wasn’t planned!”

For more information:
URBN Hotels & Resorts Shanghai 
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W: www.urbnhotels.com