How Green Hotels Can Support Earth Hour 2011

At 8:30pm on Saturday, March 26 2011, hundreds of millions of people and international landmarks across the globe will switch off the lights of homes and businesses for one hour – Earth Hour, the world’s largest public action for the environment sponsored by World Wildlife Fund. Green hotels are in a great position to show their current and future guests, staff and the community they are contributing to global environmental change that aligns with their sustainable initiatives.

Hotels will be asking their guests to go dark and restaurants will be holding Earth Hour specials.The following are a few ideas that show your hotel’s commitment to Earth Hour, be it big or small.

Switch off non-essential lights at 8:30pm on Saturday, March 26 2011
Switch to minimal lighting internally (in accordance with the occupational health and safety standards) which is also energy efficient. Be sure to plan ahead the logistics of switching off non-essential lighting for Earth Hour 2011 including neon lights in and around the hotel.

Organic dining in the dark
Savour the natural tastes of Earth’s finest organic produce in a buffet exclusively tailored for Earth Hour as Pan Pacific Orchard is planning. Welcome guests to indulge in a healthier menu while doing their part for the planet over candlelight and lanterns.

Earth “Cocktail” Hour
Design a special “green” cocktail drink menu for your guests during Earth Hour under the glow of the candle lights. Do not forget to remind your guests to switch off the lights and air-conditioning in their room before making their way down to the bar.

Register your hotel’s commitment on www.earthhour.org
Show your support by signing up at the official Earth Hour website and sharing your hotel’s ongoing actions for the planet with people around the world – it’s free!

Incorporate fundraising into your Earth Hour events
Consider fundraising as part of the festitivies by selling a special cocktail or dish where proceeds are donated the World Wildlife Fund or any other charity.

Organic moonlit massage
If your hotel offers spa services, offer guests an organic moonlit massage using eco products such as virgin coconut oil or a locally produced product.

Put on a special show for all ages
Hotels can choose to put on a shadow puppet show or have a local band perform unplugged.

Be sure to advise each guest upon check-in about Earth Hour including the message the hotel has committed to Earth Hour incuding appreciation of your guest’s support by turning off their lights. Front desk or housekeeping can also provide an Earth Hour letter to inform guests of all the details and events being held at the property.

Communicating your property’s sustainable commitment is key to branding, therefore even a sign positioned at reception and outside the guest lifts reminding guests about Earth Hour is a good idea to raise awareness.

Pan Pacific Seattle: green green hotel!!!!

One of the Pacific Northwest’s most experienced sustainability leaders is helping to transform the Pan Pacific Seattle hotel into a model of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Molly Phillips, manager of CSR for the 160-room property located near downtown Seattle, has helped establish a program called PanEarth that includes not only a CSR vision for the hotel but also a committee that overseas four community pillars: Caring for Community, Caring for Our Planet, Caring for Challenges, and Caring Globally.

Phillips, who has been at the Pan Pacific Seattle for about a year, at one time was manager, sustainable partnerships and senior sales manager for Kimpton Hotels Seattle. Phillips is one of the few people in the entire U.S. lodging industry with a full-time, property-level CSR position.
The hiring of Phillips reflects Pan Pacific Hotels Group’s commitment to expand its CSR initiatives. “PanEarth started here,” Phillips says. “It’s been copyrighted. We are looking into doing a regional program. The goal would be to have PanEarth be the global program. I am excited about its potential. It is a new direction for Pan Pacific.”
PanEarth Committee Formed

To help carry out the programs that are part of the four community pillars, a PanEarth Committee has been assembled that includes a team of leaders tasked with the following responsibilities: working with community partners to measure the hotel’s environmental impact, creating a communications strategy to convey the hotel’s CSR commitment to staff and the community, and overseeing every department’s attempts to be as green as possible.
“We try to encourage people to work on a pillar that they have a more personal connection with,” Phillips says.
Organizations benefiting from the Pan Pacific Seattle’s CSR activities include the Pike Place Senior Center, Seattle area Red Cross, Alley Cat Acres (an urban farming collective), Muscular Distrophy Assn., Angeline’s House (shelter for homeless women), and World Vision. Pan Pacific Seattle also donates about 100 pounds of partially used soap each month to Clean the World.

Numerous Green Initiatives

To reduce the property’s environmental impact, Pan Pacific Seattle owners have invested in the following: programmable digital thermostats, food waste composting, paperless check-in and check-out, green cleaning products, compact fluorescents, in-room recycling, aerators, dual-flush toilets, and a water filtration system (the hotel no longer offers bottled water).
“Green purchasing is definitely on our radar,” Phillips says. “We are getting ready to switch to biodegradable key cards. We just switched our dry cleaning company to one that uses nontoxic cleaning solutions.”
The Pan Pacific Seattle, which opened in 2006, is now registered for LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance. “We just went through the first step of analysis,” Phillips says.

The hotel’s CSR team is currently looking into offering guests the option of a carbon-neutral stay—through the purchase of renewable energy credits. Phillip’s staff is also looking into making the hotel’s green initiatives more prominent on the hotel’s website.
“Our website will be refreshed,” she says. “We will not be ‘in your face’ with our green messaging. We are a luxury product. We will be really careful about our messaging.”

http://www.panpacific.com/Seattle/Overview.html

By Glenn HasekShare
Green Lodging news

10 tips for saving water and making healthier choices

10. Avoid using products in plastic containers
I know it’s hard to avoid plastic in our everyday lives but you can search for alternatives. If you’re using body wash that is packaged in plastic try switching to bar soap. Usually soap is packaged in a cardboard box that can biodegrade or be recycled.

9. Switch to plant-based ingredients
Whether it’s your shampoo, bar of soap of even bathroom cleaning products, this will be healthier for you and your family and you’ll be reducing your impact on the planet as well. The many chemicals found in our everyday household products have a major effect on our water and our health, so switching to a plant-based, biodegradable product will really help.

8. DIY!
If you’re crafty, try creating our own soap, shampoo, etc. This way you will know exactly what’s in your product and it usually is more cost effective. There are many great resources online, such as Youtube, and soap making websites that can help you get started!

7. Simplify
Instead of having a specialized product for each part of your body, re-evaluate whether you actually need it. For me, I use my handmade soap for shaving as well, saving me dough and space in my small shower.

6. Short ‘n’ sweet
Keeping your showers short is one of the best ways to conserve water in the bathroom. If you’re used to a 20 minute shower, try limited your routine by a minute each day until it takes less than 10. Use a timer. If you’re used to a 10 minute shower, try a 5 minute one. You get the picture.

5. Low-flowin’
Make a small investment in a low-flow shower head. All you have to do is install it and you’re being kinder to the planet! Buy one with a flow rate of 2.5 gallons per minute — they come in all different styles, from sleek and modern to simple and practical. Click here for some helpful FAQs.

4. Looking glass
Ever opened up a new shower curtain and that chemical odor nearly knocked you down? Vinyl shower curtains are actually very toxic and full of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), phthalates and metals. A study has shown that some chemicals remain in the air 28 days after the shower curtain had been hung! And these shower curtains do not last forever — except in the landfill. In fact you’ll probably have to buy a new every year. Try using a water-resistant hemp shower curtain, instead. It can be put in the wash. Or try installing a glass shower door instead. It may be a larger initial investment but it will save a lot of vinyl going to the landfill. Plus it can really update the look of your bathroom!

3. In the Navy
A navy shower is where you turn off the water while you lather up. This can save a ton of unused water from going down the drain! You can also install a shut-off device that reduces shower flow to a trickle while you lather or shave. If you really want to be hardcore, try a “traditional” navy shower and keep it under two minutes!

2. Plants need H2O
Place a bucket in the shower with you and collect the run off water to water your plant or garden. This is a little extreme, but why not do it? Plants don’t care where the water comes from! Just make sure that you are using a natural, biodegradable soap so the roots of the plant won’t get damaged.

1. Sharing is caring
This is my favorite tip...share your shower routine with your significant other. This will not only save water (unless you get distracted), it can give you two some valuable time together, especially if you have a busy work schedule or have children. Some of these tips are more attainable than others but adopting just a few of them can help you conserve water or reduce your impact on the planet on shower at a time. Happy showering!

Among the top 10 trends for opportunity this year are travel, tourism and green.

According to the folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the economy’s been recovering since June 2009. I know, this might be hard to believe considering we are in 2011 now and still waiting for the clouds to clear. However, knowing this can mean the difference between expanding bottom-line benefits versus standing in the stagnant zone another year. Not to mention good news is on its way with this year’s top 10 trends.

So, why does it feel like we are stuck? A recent survey by Discover Small Business Watch says the reason for the stagnation so far has been, well, you. Tons of people, 71 percent, are waiting for economic indicators to rise before they start to hire and spend.

Whether you believe hotels benefit by increasing their innovation efforts in recessionary times or not, waiting around is still ill-advised. While hotels are tightening their belts, using the recession as a chance to leapfrog competition isn’t a bad idea. Hotels just need to be thoughtful about how they approach innovation.


The Good News Is

Some of you are already on it! Resource contraints have stimulated great sustainable business practices throughout the hospitality industry nationwide. A North Carolina-based research firm, says small-business profit margins are at a five-year high because of savvy cost-cutting strategies. From our experience, energy efficiency is a good place to start since energy use accounts for over 60 percent of expenses on average at most hotels. Implementing a hotel energy management strategy will do both the bottom-line and planet good.


Another upside for green hotels is the plethora of industry reports indicating travel and tourism are back. Revenue is expected to reach nearly $1.4 trillion according to senior analyst at IBIS World research firm. Hotel revenues are forecasted to go up by 4.4 percent to $114.8 billion. This means the opportunity in the hospitality sector is BIG.


Gone are the days of one-way, online bookings. This trend is all about optimizing your presence on the internet. Almost half of all Americans are now members of atleat one social network and research indicates social media users spend one and a half times more time online than the typical web surfer on average. This means internet-based green hotel marketing should definitely be on the list.


And of course, everything we stand for, is sustainable profitability. If your hotel is not thinking of ways to go green, then you are behind the curve. Trust us, it’s not just a fad. It’s inextricably linked to how hotels will do business going forward. Even corporations and the government are on it. We think its becomng the status quo. It will be those other differentiators, like costs, quality and experience that will still matter.


Just in case you were wondering about the remaining six trends for 2011, here they are:

76 million-strong baby boomers

Home owners open wallets to home repairs and renovations

Healthcare and social assistance have been propelled by recent legislative reform

Men’s lifestyle market is stronger than ever

Moderately priced luxury is being valued by value-conscious consumers

Fitness clubs and health stores are on the rise as 10 million joined in 2009 alone

About Author

Susan Patel, VP of Technologies & Communications received her B.S. in Economics from Rutgers College at New Brunswick and has over six years of financial and investment analyst experience. Driven by her passion for sustainability and economic development since childhood and through philanthropic adventures internationally, Susan now leads business development and operations at EcoGreenHotel and is the Site Director and Managing Editor of EcoGreenHotel online publications.

Source: EcoGreen Hotel

Thirty-one states, three cities and one region currently have some form of green lodging program.

Audobon Green Leaf Eco-Rating Program
Ottawa, Ont.
http://greenleaf.auduboninternational.org/

Hotels that have been audited through the Audobon Green Leaf Eco-Rating Program have met environmental best practices standards that are required for their rating of one to five green leafs.

Certification for Sustainable Tourism
San Jose, Costa Rica
http://www.allstays.com/green-hotels/green-hotels.htm

Certification for Sustainable Tourism (CST) is a product of the Cost Rican Tourism Institute. It was designed to differentiate tourism sector businesses based on the degree to which they comply with a sustainable model of natural, cultural and social resource management.

EarthCheck
Queensland, Australia
http://www.earthcheck.org/Default.aspx

EarthCheck is used by travel and tourism organisations around the world to validate their carbon claims and guide their sustainability initiatives. It is one of the largest environmental benchmarking, certification and management solutions in use by the travel industry.

EcoRooms & EcoSuites
Saint Charles, Mo.
http://www.ecorooms.com/
EcoRooms & EcoSuites are properties that meet eight criteria. These include such things as using Green Seal or equivalent cleaning products and offering 100 percent nonsmoking accommodations.

Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, D.C.
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=hospitality.bus_hospitality
The U.S. EPA offers an Energy Star for Hospitality program to the lodging industry. Energy Star for Hospitality is a proven energy management program that helps hotels measure current energy performance, set goals, and track savings. Buildings that earn the Energy Star use about 35 percent less energy than average buildings.

Green Business Bureau
Houston
http://www.gbb.org/
The Green Business Bureau offers a certification program for small to medium-size businesses in the lodging industry.

Green Globe
Murrieta, Calif.
http://www.greenglobeint.com/
Green Globe is the worldwide benchmarking and certification program which facilitates sustainable travel and tourism for consumers, companies and communities. The organization’s website includes a list of participating hotels, resorts and lodges.
Green Globes
Toronto

The Green Globes system is a building environmental design and management tool. It delivers an online assessment protocol, rating system and guidance for green building design, operation and management. It provides market recognition of a building’s environmental attributes through third-party verification.

Green Key Global
Ottawa, Ontario
http://www.greenkeyglobal.com/
Green Key Global, operated by the Hotel Association of Canada and LRA Worldwide, is designed to recognize hotels, motels and resorts in Canada and the United States that are committed to improving their fiscal and environmental performances.

Green Restaurant Assn.
Sharon, Mass.
http://www.dinegreen.com/
The Green Restaurant Association, of which hoteliers can be members, provides services in research, consulting, education, marketing and community organizing. The GRA utilizes a collaborative strategy that involves restaurants, manufacturers, vendors, grassroots organizations, government, media and restaurant customers. The GRA’s model provides a convenient way for all sectors of the restaurant industry, which represents 10 percent of the U.S. economy, to become more environmentally sustainable.

Green Seal
Washington, D.C.
http://www.greenseal.org/
Green Seal is an independent, nonprofit organization that strives to achieve a healthier and cleaner environment by identifying and promoting products and services that cause a minimal amount of pollution and waste. Green Seal certifies these using internationally recognized methods and procedures. The Web site includes a list of hotels that have been Green Seal certified.

Green Suites Certified Green Hotel Program
Upland, Calif.
http://www.greensuites.com/Environmentally-Friendly-Hotel-Supplies/Green-Suites-Certified-Green-Hotel-Program
Green Suites® Certified Green Hotel Program aims to recognize and honor hotels for what they have done to protect the planet. Hotels are awarded a leaf rating based on environmental practices and products they have implemented. Guests have the ability to both find listed green hotels and self-audit the hotels based on the properties' listed environmental initiatives.

Green Tourism Business Scheme
Scotland
http://www.green-business.co.uk/
The Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) is an accredited VisitScotland Quality Assurance scheme. It is operated in Scotland on behalf of VisitScotland by a not-for-profit company called Green Business UK Ltd.

Legambiente Turismo Ecolabel
Bologna, Italy
http://www.legambienteturismo.it/
More than 400 tourism businesses have received Legambiente Turismo's Ecolabel for minimizing waste, recycling, using less water and energy, serving healthy food and typical local produce and products, and promoting local nature and culture heritage.

NaturCert
Athens, Greece
http://www.naturcert.com/
NaturCert certification is designed for enabling hotels as well as travel and tourism companies to go green, while demonstrating corporate social responsibility leadership to customers, partners, suppliers and stakeholders.

Sustainable Travel International
U.S.A.—Costa Rica—U.K.—Malaysia—Taiwan—Brazil
http://www.sustainabletravelinternational.org/documents/sustainabletourismcertification.html
STI, which has been involved in the sustainable tourism certification movement since 2002, offers solutions for accommodations of all sizes. STI's standards are aligned with the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria and have been developed transparently in collaboration with the travel industry. Offerings include: Sustainable Tourism EcoCertification Program™ for accommodations of all types and sizes, and the Luxury Eco-certification program, a sustainable tourism standard specifically designed for luxury accommodations.

UL Environment
Northbrook, IL
http://www.ulenvironment.com/ulenvironment/eng/pages/
UL Environment is the full service environmental solutions business unit within UL. UL Environment helps support the growth and development of sustainable products, services and organizations in the global marketplace through standards development, educational services and independent third-party assessment and certification. Specific services include environmental claims validation, sustainable products certification, energy efficiency certification, environmental product declarations and advisory services.

U.S. Green Building Council
Washington, D.C.
http://www.usgbc.org/
The U.S. Green Building Council is the United States’ foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live

Discover eco-sensitive resorts, hotels or motels in North America

The Green Key Eco-Rating Program is a graduated rating system designed to recognize hotels, motels, and resorts that are committed to improving their fiscal and environmental performance.
Based on the results of a comprehensive environmental audit, hoteliers are awarded a 1-5 Green Key rating and given guidance on how to "unlock" opportunities to reduce operating costs and environmental impacts through reduced utility consumption, employee training, and supply chain management.
The Green Key Eco-Rating Program is a voluntary program, although hoteliers are encouraged to participate, not only for the health of the planet but also for the ‘health’ of their business. Energy retrofits do lead to significant monetary savings over the long run. The program is open to any lodging property in Canada and the United States.
The program assesses the 5 main operational areas of a property and covers nine areas of sustainable practices:

Operational Areas
Corporate Environmental Management
Housekeeping
Food and Beverage Operations
Conference & Meeting Facilities
Engineering
Sustainable Practices
Energy conservation
Water conservation
Solid waste management
Hazardous waste management
Indoor air quality
Community outreach
Building infrastructure
Land use
Environmental management

How an Outside Consultant Can Help You Green Your Hotel?

During the past several years, we have all witnessed the incredible growth of green building projects. At times, it seems that that the number of buildings establishing green initiatives is expanding almost exponentially. Building owners and developers are seeing that introducing green practices not only results in a positive environmental impact but also cost savings and marketing advantages.

Certainly the hospitality industry—looking to attract the growing legion of guests and green meeting planners that care deeply about energy reduction, a healthy indoor environment and sustainability principles in general—has joined the surge to achieve the greenest possible profile.

The purpose of this column is to demonstrate how one mid-sized hotel without a large staff—the Holiday Inn Grand Rapids Downtown in Michigan—was able to achieve its green goals through the cost-effective use of an outside consultant.
The three-star hotel, with 175 rooms on eight floors, is a member of the Green Hotel Association and has achieved Leader Certification from the Michigan Green Lodging Association, the highest level of environmental recognition available to hotels in the state.
General Manager Had Little Extra Time

Formerly the Days Hotel and relaunched as a Holiday Inn in December 2009, the hotel approached our company in November 2007 with the request to help make the property greener. From the outset, it was clear that even though general manager Ellen Markel was passionate about making green policies a center piece for the mid-sized hotel, she was knee-deep in management duties enough for three people, had no dedicated in-house support team for green initiatives, and needed an outside agency to help achieve her green goals.

First and foremost behind all the green initiatives at the Holiday Inn are the hotel owners, who are thoroughly committed to environmental sustainability, and Markel’s unwavering focus on energy efficiency and recycling. Markel has also integrated the hotel’s green strategy into everyone’s job, requiring each department to come up with a new, green initiative every quarter.
The role of the outside consultant at any hotel is to act as the hotel’s dedicated green team and to help it become greener. It should create detailed reports, track energy usage quarterly and provide statistics on how much and where the hotel uses energy and water, and then compares that to previous quarters. Tracking utility consumption since 2008, the Holiday Inn Grand Rapids’ consultant now has several years of data on file and is able to provide critical analyses about the hotel’s progress and associated savings.

Overall, the consultant should track the areas of green room sales, electricity, gas, water, waste and public relations. For example, analysis for the third quarter of 2010 showed that total sustainability measures implemented at the Holiday Inn generated $14,110 in value, which was a $554.07 increase over the previous quarter. In addition, the Holiday Inn used less electricity and gas in Q3 of 2010 than in Q3 of 2009, continuing a strong trend of decreasing utility consumption. The profit from sustainability-related room sales in 3Q 2010, at $8,683, was significantly higher than any previous quarter in 2009 or 2010. Cumulatively, sustainability savings for the hotel since tracking began in the fourth quarter of 2008 are at $44, 073.
Assisted With Marketing/P.R.

At the Holiday Inn, the consultant helped with the creation and marketing of sustainability events for the hotel, and wrote press releases about the events and other green initiatives. The Holiday Inn features at least one green event per month to benefit the community as part of its sustainability program.

Most recently, in January the hotel held a Christmas tree recycling event, where community members were encouraged to drop off their trees which would then be sent to a composting center, ground down and turned into soil. The hotel also held a “Lights Out Lunch” event at its Pearl Street Grill on Thursdays each week during the month of August, during which the restaurant served meals with no electric lighting to promote energy conservation.

Conference and event professionals, as well as guests, increasingly select a venue based on green factors, and accordingly the hotel is eager to make its green policies known to meeting planners. The hotel’s consultant created the green meetings package brochure for outreach campaigns using the slogan: “You book the meeting. We’ll save the environment.”

While a major component of green practices is energy savings and increased revenue, profitability, while important, is not the hotel’s sole motivation. The hotel has organized several green community events that were never intended to be money-makers. Hotel ownership and management truly care about being green for the sake of the environment which is readily felt by customers. The overarching theme of customer and community service is a commitment to being a contributing member of a sustainable community.

For its efforts, the Holiday Inn is recognized as the leading green hotel in the area. One indicator of success is that more than 90 percent of TripAdvisor reviewers recommend the Holiday Inn Grand Rapids Downtown, a phenomenal statistic since many AAA five star rated hotels receive only 80 percent approval on the travel website.

From this representative case study, you can begin to see how a mid-sized hotel without a large staff can achieve its green goals through the cost-effective use of an outside consultant. Since making a formal commitment to environmental consciousness in 2007, the Holiday Inn Grand Rapids Downtown has successfully implemented sustainable programs that touch all areas of its operations, with positive effects that are quantifiable. With minimal in-house resources and a large dose of passion for environmental sustainability initiatives, the Holiday Inn Grand Rapids Downtown has consistently achieved cost savings from waste, energy and water use reduction, and has increased its conference and room revenues through green branding.

Darren Johnston is principal and co-founder of Boulder, Colo.-based UHG Consulting, a full service sustainability consulting firm specializing in design, administration and support of sustainability initiatives ranging from waste reduction to LEED certification. UHG recently helped the Colorado Convention Center obtain LEED certification, making it the largest facility in Colorado to earn the distinction from USGBC. UHG’s services include LEED consulting, property audits, energy audits, waste audits, project management, and green building.