| Hotel Rantapuisto, (Project) Service design and sustainability |
Honestly, when this project started, we weren’t entirely sure what we’d find. We had our theories from class, our frameworks, our templates. But walking into Hotel Rantapuisto for the first time, a quiet, waterfront property tucked away in Helsinki felt different from anything we’d studied on paper.
Over several months, our team spent time at the hotel conducting field studies and observing how guests moved through space. We also had the chance to sit down with clients and hear directly about the hotel, which turned out to be one of the most grounding parts of the whole project. One honest conversation gave us more clarity than any desk research.
”The most interesting thing we learned. Sustainability and great service aren’t competing priorities. They’re the same instinct caring about people and the world around them.”
What stood out most during our research was how the hotel’s connection to its natural surroundings shaped everything the materials, the atmosphere, the pace of the place. It wasn’t trying to be a flashy city hotel. It leaned into what was a calm, considered space near the water. And guests responded to that authenticity in a way that no amount of marketing could manufacture.
On the service side, the moments that mattered most weren’t grand gestures. They were small things noticed, a space that invited you to slow down rather than rush through.That simplicity, we came to realize, is incredibly hard to design deliberately. It takes intention at every level of the operation.
Our team went through cycles of research, reflection, and ideation mapping guest journeys, benchmarking against other hospitality models, prototyping ideas for how the experience could be strengthened. It was messy at times, in the best way. The kind of productive mess that leads somewhere. By the time we presented our final outcomes, we had moved well past our initial assumptions. We came in expecting to find a tension between sustainability and customer satisfaction and left convinced they belong together. A hotel that genuinely cares about its environmental impact tends to bring that same care to the guest experience. One reinforces the other.
Team members: Tiina Määttänen, Tessa Lähdesmäki, Chandrakala Gharti, Sonja Ojavuo, Sabin Bhattarai, Roshika Khadka, Sujal Tiberewal,
Client: Kaisu Eronen
Tutor: Sanna Ahonen
We’re grateful to Hotel Rantapuisto for trusting a group of students with a real look at how they operate. It’s the kind of experience that sticks with you not because everything was perfect, but because it was real. And real is always more useful than perfect.
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