Crowne Plaza Franchise lays fresh 'grass carpets' in meeting rooms to promote creativity

By: Crowne Plaza | 7 Shares 178 Reads

Green Grass Thinking

August 16, 2010 // Franchising.com // In a bid to inject some creativity into traditional and often mundane business meetings, Crowne Plaza is laying fresh green grass in conference rooms at a number of its hotels across the UK and Ireland. The new rooms, filled with living grass, aim to stimulate creative thinking among business guests by helping them step away from a traditional office environment into an unconventional space.

According to research from InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which owns a stable of brands including Crowne Plaza, forty per cent of professionals lose focus within the first 20 minutes of a meeting, often as a result of their uninspiring surroundings.

Angela Whitlock, author of Walk on the Grass and professional speaker, said: "Research has shown that by the age of 25, as much as 98% of our creativity has vanished. Crowne Plaza's initiative is perfect because it breaks down the self-imposed rules that prevent us from achieving our full potential. The look and feel of the grass is said to remind guests of their childhood and therefore free them of societal barriers that restrict creativity. Everybody should kick off their shoes once in a while and walk barefoot on the grass to rekindle the creativity that was allowed to flow freely in childhood before too many rules got in the way."

The grass-filled meeting rooms are being trialled at Crowne Plaza London Docklands, Crowne Plaza Glasgow and Crowne Plaza Dublin Northwood. They are available from today (Monday 16 August) for one week (until Friday 20 August).

Eleanor Conroy from Crowne Plaza said: "Meetings should be productive and enjoyable but we all know from experience that some meetings can be less than inspiring. The fresh grass turfed meeting rooms are one of the things we're doing at Crowne Plaza to help our guests get the most out of their business trips. Earlier this year, we introduced the SleepAdvantage programme with quiet zones, aromatherapy oils and special sleep podcasts from sleep specialist Dr Chris Idzikowski to help our guests wake up ready to perform."

Notes to Editors:

The study was conducted by Redshift Research amongst 1,000 UK workers between the 24 and 26 February 2010.

Angela Whitlock PGD.Hyp, BSCH(Mem) Cert Ed is a professional speaker, author, hypnotherapist, emdr therapist and creative coach. Walk on the Grass is published by Whitlock Boyle and is available on Amazon, online at http://www.angelawhitlock.com or via BookLocker.com www.booklocker.com/books/4737.html. For more information, contact angela@angelawhitlock.com, 0845 643 6117 www.twitter.com/angewhitlock.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is the world's largest hotel group by number of rooms. IHG franchises, leases, manages or owns, through various subsidiaries, over 4,500 hotels and more than 650,000 guest rooms in 100 countries and territories around the world. The Group owns a portfolio of well recognised and respected hotel brands including InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo®, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites® and Candlewood Suites® and also manages the world's largest hotel loyalty programme, Priority Club® Rewards with 52 million members worldwide.

IHG has over 1,300 hotels in its development pipeline, which will create 160,000 jobs worldwide over the next few years.

InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is the Group's holding company and is incorporated in Great Britain and registered in England and Wales.