Hotel Wander smelled of artificial banana. Whether it was the jungle wallpaper or the cleaning product, I couldn’t tell. But the moment you stepped into the Seaweed Suite, something shifted. The smell changed. Marine, not pungent like sun-dried fronds or the rotting seaweed line at low tide. Earthy is the word people reach for, but that’s not quite it. It was oceanic. A living smell. The kind that tells your nervous system: you can be at ease now.
The guests who paid attention noticed the Do Not Disturb sign before they noticed anything else. Black background, white shell flecks pressed into the material, golden lettering. “Do Not Disturb” on one side. “Please Service Room” on the other. The same silent language every hotel uses, made from something the ocean left behind. Several guests picked it up without being asked. They smelled it too.
That’s when I knew the room was working.
VIP guests arrived to find their pre-ordered Seaweed Tee waiting, then were whisked directly to the spa. The Seaweed Sisters were ready. Sea Spark was ready. Seaweed glitter makeovers - SparkUps as we call them - a proper introduction to the bio-glitter made from seaweed that returned a little joy I had surrendered years ago at Burning Man when I understood what glitter actually costs the planet. Here in the Seaweed Suite: it sparkles, it’s ocean-derived, and watching guests receive it on their skin in a hotel room made from seaweed felt like a small, complete world.
The dark walk-in wardrobe held a sampling of what algae-printed clothing actually looks like in practice. Swimsuits, t-shirts, socks, and a hotel laundry bag. All the packaging was made with seaweed and printed with algae. Most guests paused there longer than expected.
Then the tour, for those who wanted it, and most did. I walked them through the interior architectural logic of the room: which materials we swap, which coastal resources from the North and Baltic Sea region would replace the plastic and chemically coated surfaces standard in every hotel room on earth. Since our partners, the Young Alganeers, tend to focus on microalgae, we designed the Seaweed Suite with that world in mind alongside the macro. We led workshops for two student groups in the room during the event, learning an ice-dye technique using spirulina: not tie-dye exactly, more like painted sea-inspired motifs and beautiful accidental puddles of color. The sectional sofa they worked around was draped in icy blue salvaged SeaCell fabric, ice-dyed with the same spirulina, a nod to a Margiela sofa design I had admired for years. The coffee table featured two 3D printed reef structures so considered in their form they belonged in a gallery as much as the ocean. Art and coral restoration in the same object.
There was no minibar. Instead: specialty seaweed coffee packaging, single-use seaweed sachets, micro and macro algae drink mixes, seaweed straws, Rootless Daily Bites, rose dulse tea, and seaweed flakes to sprinkle on whatever you were eating.
You could hear the spirulina growing. A gentle gurgle from the fluorescent green lamp beside the large screen showing only seaweed content. Seaweed TV. The media shelf held my collection of algae books from around the world, in their original languages. The newest: The Power of Plankton, signed by Vincent Doumeizel just days before.
But the moment that stopped people was the bathroom.
The Seaweed Sisters had filled the bathtub with Knotted wrack ''Ascophyllum nodosum'' and Spiral wrack ''fucus spiralis'' hand foraged in Zeeland. Real, whole, tactile seaweed. Guests were invited to pop the bladders themselves and press the gel directly onto their skin. No instruction needed. Something instinctive took over. People went quiet in there too, in a different way than the lounge. The lounge was restful. The bathroom was connective. A reminder of where all of it, the sheets, the dye, the drinks, the glitter, the kelpons actually comes from. The ocean. The living, generous, underestimated ocean. This experience landed every time.
Most guests settled into the lounge and stayed. A calm retreat between conference sessions and busy corridors. Which meant the bedroom remained open, quiet, with a beautiful view and the blue seaweed sheets offering a cool contrast to the white linens they replaced. The spirulina-dyed jersey duvet was a crowd pleaser. The footboard held more reef structures. The headboard carried our favorite seaweed stories and the Made with L’EAUTELIER eyemask, printed with algae on recycled hotel linens.
The last visitor left just before 22h00.
And then the room was mine.
Find something you like? You can find the entire Seaweed Suite Wageningen collection at SeaweedSuite.com.
