The Green Convergence

By Staff -- Hotels, 6/1/2007

Wolfgang Neumann, president, Hilton Hotels Europe, on one of 1,200 mountain bikes awarded to each team member of the five winning hotels in the Hilton We Care! program.

WORLDWIDE Richard Hartman, managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), refers to the industry's recent awakening to the urgent need for sustainable hotelkeeping as "a convergence of attitudes" among hotel owners, operators, employees, consumers, communities and governments. Everyone, or so it appears, is fi nally truly interested in running "green" hotels-never mind the fact that it is the right thing to do for the future of humanity, and even fi nancially rewarding. Hotel companies are coming out with more press releases than ever before extolling the virtues of their green operations guides, marketing efforts, social programs and hotel concepts. In the fi rst quarter of 2007, at least 70 press releases have been sent out by the major chains and small independent hoteliers. The news ranges from Starwood Capital Group's "1," a luxury hotel concept that embraces sustainable development and social responsibility, to news about tree plantings on Earth Day, codes of conduct for protecting children and successful green hotelkeeping initiatives like Hilton International's program that saved 6.7% in energy consumption. This goes without mentioning the fact that around the world, eco-friendly resorts in hot spots like Costa Rica and even urban eco-friendly hotels are being announced like never before.

But the question remains: Is this mostly lip service as corporations seek positive publicity to meet corporate governance responsibilities, or is this the real deal? The best person to answer these questions is Lyndall De Marco, a former hotelier who is now executive director of the International Tourism Partnership, a program of the International Business Leaders Forum, a not-for-profi t organization and a charity of HRH The Prince of Wales.

"There is no doubt corporate governance is a signifi cant issue, but I think hotels are now realizing it is important not only to be green but to also tell their guests, employees and investors how they are implementing those programs and the results," De Marco says. "I am a great believer in positive reinforcement, and this spate of good news will hopefully encourage this fi ercely competitive industry to do more." "The hotel industry should not use this concept as an opportunity, but consider it a responsibility," says Hervé Houdré, general manager of the Willard InterContinental, who has created an extensive sustainable development strategy for his hotel and perhaps a blueprint for IHG. "Our footprint is most important due to the nature of our business. We are in contact with millions of people every day, be they staff or clients, and we can reach out to all of them so they may refl ect about their share of this great responsibility and hopefully take action in the way they think and act as individuals and in their company."

For hoteliers looking for further guidance on how to go green, De Marco has just released a report called "Going Green: Minimum Standards Toward A Sustainable Hotel." What makes this guide unique and invaluable is that the guidelines set forth are specifi c to the hotel industry and not a general guide for all commercial buildings. The strategies and approaches here can help increase sustainability and minimize a hotel operation's negative impacts on the surrounding ecosystems and cultures, while increasing its positive contributions to biodiversity conservation, cultural heritage preservation and community development.

"Any scheme or guidelines that help protect the environment are very important, but I am not sure the sustainable operation guidelines for an offi ce building are comprehensive enough for a hotel," De Marco says. "A full-service hotel operation can have more than 30 business units, huge numbers of employees and guests using all the facilities for 24 hours, 365 days a year. Sustainable hotel guidelines should refl ect the multifaceted nature of the industry. I simply don't think certifi cation schemes are enough-sustainability has to be embedded in the day-to-day operation and owned by everyone."

"Any scheme or guidelines that help protect the environment are very important, but I am not sure the sustainable operation guidelines for an office building are comprehensive enough for a hotel." -Lyndall De Marco

De Marco's guide includes six sections: policy and framework; staff training and awareness; environmental management; purchasing; people and communities; and destination protection. "Going Green" also has multiple tips for saving on energy use, water and waste.

"These are minimum standards that we have developed in conjunction with some of the world's leading hoteliers," De Marco says. "I would consider them to be fi rst steps, and the focus was that they should be user friendly. They are not meant to be the basis for certifi cation but a guide for hoteliers to start considering sustainability. These are generic standards that can be customized locally and we have tried to concentrate on the operation of a hotel-its place and impact on the economy, the community and the environment. Are they enough-defi nitely not, but it is a start."

Raising The Bar

Among the other industry leaders in green hotelkeeping is Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, which recently launched its third edition of the "Green Partnership Guide," a comprehensive how-to text for companies looking to green their operations. The book details how to start, maintain and grow an environmental program, including case studies on reducing operating costs, keeping employees motivated and tracking cost savings. Among the examples Fairmont sites: The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto installed a commercial water softener that reduced laundered water use to one wash and one rinse per cycle, saving 125,000 gal. (473,162 liters) of water per day, roughly enough water to supply 500 homes. Adding to this reduction, the hotel also took advantage of the city's new ICI Water Saver Program, which rewards industrial, commercial and institutional water savings, and received close to US$50,000 for its efforts.

Hilton International has for several years now been among the industry pacesetters in adopting green hotelkeeping initiatives. On January 1, 2006, almost 80 Hilton general managers in Europe and Africa received a green box with a letter from president of Hilton Europe & Africa, Wolfgang Neumann, asking them to think green. Their target was to reduce energy consumption across the portfolio by 5% in the fi rst year, and 15% within three years. Their challenge was to mobilize green team members-employees in the kitchens, the offi ces, the engineering departments and more-to workshop together and identify solutions and adopt the initiatives to redress the problem.

In the course of a year, 16,600 team members attended "We Care!" workshops, 4,400 completed a 45-minute Hilton University online eco-learning course, and the company picked up three awards for its efforts. But the proof is in the fi gures: Hilton in Europe and Africa shaved 6.7% energy consumption, avoiding US$3.2 million in climbing energy costs and reducing per guest night water consumption by 11 liters (3 gal.). Along the way, new technologies and different fuels helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 5,800 tons (the same as 129 airbuses flying roundtrip London to Malta).

This year, Hilton has set the bar even higher. The region's objective is to reduce another 5% of energy and introduce a target reduction in water of 10%. There is also discussion of rolling this initiative out across the globe in 2008. "To do this, we will focus on the 10 hotels that achieved the least energy reductions in 2006 and investigate how we can assist them to hit our targets using our top hotels as best practice examples," Neumann says. "For all hotels, we will automatically approve and implement energy projects or environmental technologies that provide a return on investment of less than 1.5 years, and we will continue to push our grass-roots training program as part of the team member induction program to make sure we have a team of more than 15,000 people helping us get the message out."

In 2007 Hilton will audit all European hotels to assess current practices, chemical usage and waste. In 2008 Hilton aims to secure ecofriendly alternative chemicals and in 2009 to improve its waste management. On a macro scale, Hilton's technical services and engineering teams will continue to focus on the hotel building management system and make sure these are being used correctly and that parameters are optimized. For all new-build hotels, energy-saving technologies will be incorporated from the outset.

IHG announced in early May that The Hotel Management Group, the company's Americas operations division, will launch a new environmental initiative to replace more than 250,000 incandescent light bulbs with new energy-effi cient compact fl uorescent lights in guestrooms at more than 200 company-managed hotels across the Americas.

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts just came out with its third version of its acclaimed Green Partnership Guide, a comprehensive how-to text for companies looking to "green" their operations.

Looking closer inside IHG, the Willard's Houdré has authored a 77-page paper on sustainable development in the hotel business, explaining the concept, its background and the necessary implementation process. He goes on to provide a proposal for a sustainable development strategy within a worldwide hotel company-both at the global and unit level-and an overview of the programs and successes he has had at the Willard.

"Its purpose is to be a guideline, a source of ideas for those who feel they can make a difference but do not know where to start," Houdré says. "Greening is fi ne and very important, but it has to be perceived by owners and asset managers as a source of revenue and not a cost center; therefore the concept of the three P's (profi t, people, planet) is much better understood and supported by all."

Houdré's property strategy is called, "Willard InterContinental-The Next 100 Years," an ongoing process with a fi ve-year roadmap. There are now dozens of projects but he is particularly proud of two-Project Blue and Project Green. Project Blue encompasses everything that has to do with water, and the hotel has a fund to supply with the savings from the towel conservation program. Houdre intends to expand it to linens, as well. Project Green deals with the cleanliness of the air and anything related to parks and trees. The hotel has adopted the park across the street and a team of 20 employees cleans it on a regular basis.

Proving that hotels of all sizes can be successfully developed as green, Greenhouse 26, the fi rst green boutique hotel in New York City, will open in the spring of 2008. Blending fi rst-class amenities with progressive environmental initiatives, Greenhouse 26 will apply for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold status and pioneer the use of geothermal energy. Greenhouse 26 will be the fi rst hotel in New York City to utilize a geothermal heating and cooling system.

Another trendy approach by hoteliers is to offset the hotel's or guest's carbon footprint on Earth. Rosewood Hotels & Resorts' King Pacific Lodge, Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada, has a plan to reduce its carbon footprint by half, and includes a fi rst in the hospitality industry: in addition to offsetting the carbon emissions of all lodge operations and employee travel, also offsetting guests' air travel to and from the lodge-creating a truly carbon-neutral vacation.

The air travel being offset by the lodge is from the guest's point of origin anywhere in the world to Vancouver on any airline, and from Vancouver to the lodge via the lodge's private air and seaplane charters. Among the other key elements of the lodge's carbon-footprint-reduction plan are installing a river-hydro plant and solar panels for the lodge's power needs and using suppliers who conduct their own program of carbon reduction.