Global Restaurant Investment Forum

Speaker Profile

Inge van Weert

General Manager at QO Amsterdam

Inge is a passionate, hands-on hotelier with a focus on innovation, circularity and guest experience. Inge has a background in change management in luxury & lifestyle hotels in key cities as Brussels, London & Dubai. She is currently in Amsterdam in charge of the multi-award winning QO Amsterdam, a lifestyle hotel that shows that sustainability & luxury can go hand in hand.

The QO is a new experience where both travellers and the local community can intertwine.

Whenever people meet at the QO, the element of energy creates a spark that can ignite countless possibilities. That’s why we’ve created a place where travellers can feel like locals, and locals can feel at home.

The natural world works in cycles, but humans have been slow to adopt this approach to our own relationship with the planet. It’s now crucial that we move away from our linear, ‘take, make and dispose’ approaches and adopt circular ones to ensure we live within our means.

We make a point of using long-lasting instead of throwaway items. And finally, we reuse, repurpose or recycle before we even consider discarding something. We’re proud to put this into practice throughout the QO. It’s the force behind our greenhouse – the core of our living building – where you can see the concept brought to life.

Our greenhouse is the perfect example of how we envisage a living building. And what it means to make that a reality. By developing a fully functioning, self-sufficient and self-regulating ecosystem, we have created an active approach to circularity that filters through every floor of the QO. It connects the layers of the hotel by growing specialist and distinctive fruits, vegetables and herbs – to provide produce that’s enjoyed from Persijn all the way up to Juniper & Kin. And is a vital part of our production.

In Juniper & Kin, 78 meters above the city of Amsterdam and voted “Best sustainable hotel bar” for the 2nd time in a row, our guest experience a symbiosis between fine dining, a destination cocktail bar and urban farming.

Our rooftop greenhouse creates seasonal flavours which inspire our dishes and drinks.