The first Pullman branded hotel and serviced apartments in Ghana, Pullman Accra Airport City, is seeking to achieve IFC’s EDGE green building certification.
The 364-key hotel and serviced apartments will become the largest hospitality development and the first dual hospitality offering in Ghana when it opens in 2021.
A consultant to the project, Annelide Sherratt, told News Ghana that owners of the soon-to-open, ultra-modern hotel are currently undergoing the EDGE certification process.
To become certified, the hotel must demonstrate a minimum savings of 20 percent in three areas: energy, water and embodied energy in materials, as compared to a standard hotel project in Accra. The project will be certified by the consortium of thinkstep, SGS, the exclusive provider of EDGE certification services in Ghana.
“The technical team at Pullman has submitted the necessary documentation through the EDGE online certification process,” said Annelide Sherratt, a manager at Solid Green, a sustainable building consultancy. “All signs point to the hotel being designed in a resource-efficient way that will be beneficial to their business and attract customers who care about the environment.”
The use of EDGE in the design of all kinds of residential and commercial buildings, including hotels, is seen as a game changer in terms of the technology to be deployed vis-à-vis the conventional methods of building in the past.
Before the introduction of EDGE, developers needed to bring several consultants on board with access to advanced software modelling to improve the sustainability of a project. EDGE provides a one-stop-shop, making it faster, easier and more affordable to certify.
“There is a misconception about green being expensive,” said Ernest Larmie, Project Manager for Inter-Afrique Holdings, which is the promoter of the project. “EDGE gives us the opportunity right from the get-go to compare the cap-ex and op-ex. It’s the passion of our company to do the little we can to decrease our impact on the environment.”
Pullman Accra Airport City is a joint development between equity partners Inter-Afrique Holdings Limited and Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF), the private-sector focused sovereign wealth fund of Ghana with diversified interests in infrastructure and tourism. The construction of the hotel is expected to generate thousands of jobs for locals.
Pullman Accra will feature 215 hotel rooms and suites and 149 serviced apartments under the Pullman Living brand, responding to a growing demand for extended-stay accommodation in Accra.
The new-build, upscale hotel is anticipated to become a major venue for conferences and events with seven meeting rooms and a banqueting facility in addition to being located just a few minutes away from the Kotoka International Airport.
In addition, Pullman Accra Airport City will offer two restaurants with swimming pools and lush, landscaped areas.
There are currently over 115 Pullman hotels in 33 countries worldwide with close to 35,000 rooms. In Africa and the Middle East, Pullman offers 12 hotels with more than 4,000 rooms. Pullman Accra Airport City will join the list of flagship addresses worldwide that includes Pullman Dakar and Pullman Abidjan.
An innovation of IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, EDGE is a green building certification for nearly 160 countries. EDGE is supported by free software that encourages solutions to reduce energy, water and the energy used to make building materials by at least 20 percent, which is the standard for EDGE certification.
