Earth Day 2011: Engaging Your Guests & Community
Celebrate April 22nd – and help raise awareness about environmental concerns with your green hotel guests and community – by hosting one of the following top ten ideas.
Hold a “Green” Wine & Food Event
Celebrate the day with local wineries, restaurants, farms and locally sourced products. You can offer a special Sustainable Wine & Food lunch or dinner to your guests and community or go all out and have a festival right at your green hotel. Either way, you’ll definitely make the local newspaper (make sure you let them know in advance).
Replace Disposables
May of the items hotel guests and employees use every day can be improved to be reusable and reduce waste. Replace your drinking cups with these compostable World Art hot & cold cups or how about a refillable water bottle, for starters.
“Go Green, Save Green” Package
Offer guests a custom green stay package, which can include room discount, favorable hybrid parking spot, and percent off on organic products and services at your gift shop, spa, restaurant, or bar.
Serve Sustainable Food
If you have a restaurant at your green hotel, allow your Chefs to serve sustainable entrees. When the bill comes, diners can donate $1 to a non-profit charitable eco-friendly organization like the National Geographic Society.
Hybrid Parking & Bike Rentals
Offer complimentary, special spot, parking for hybrid vehicles and offer free or discounted bike rentals to guests to explore your city. Don’t forget the bike rack!
Change the Lights
Being a “green” hotel starts with the basics. Make sure all the lights in the hotel are eco-friendly to help conserve energy. LED light bulbs
Earth Day Green Project
Enlist your guests and employees to take part in a community restoration, clean-up or any other environmentally friendly project (even if it’s simply planting trees). Afterwards, they can take advantage of discounts at your bar, restaurant, or on eco-minded spa services.
Join a Resource Pledge
Make a pact (or policy) with your employees, guests and others, locally or on a national scale, to help conserve resources. Involve your guests by inviting them to participate in a “Take a short shower” program (give out branded shower timers that guest can take home and use) or “Turn all lights off during daylight hours” or simply purchase recycled paper only from now on; etc.
Start a Community Garden
With just a little bit of space, raw material, and effort, a community garden within your green hotel’s landscape serves many purposes. It can get guests and the community actively involved in an eco-related activity; produce fresh fruits and vegetables for your restaurant/kitchen or beautiful flowers for scenery. It also helps bring the community closer together at your hotel! It will definitely leave an impression.
Attend a Rally
Sheer force of numbers helps to raise awareness about environmental issues. Show your community and guests your commitment to being a green hotel. Be a face in the crowd at a local rally to help tip the scale in favor of eco-friendliness. You can enlist employees and guests to attend. Gather for pre-rally fun and shuttle everyone to the event! Your hotel’s good stewardship will definitely recognized.
About EcoGreenHotel
EcoGreenHotel is dedicated to helping lodging facilities address environmental issues and achieve the Triple Bottom Line. EcoGreenHotel.com is also a great resource for tools, checklists, current news and trends, as well as a marketplace for green products and services at EcoGreenHotelStore.com. EcoGreenHotel also offers green marketing services for existing green hotels.
Generation Y’s Green Hotel Demands:
Not what you might expect!
A new study of the workplace preferences of Generation Y (people born between 1981 and 2000) reveals some striking information – and provides an important heads up for green hotels that hope to attract this up-and-coming demographic.
Not surprisingly, Gen Y’ers want their workplace to have the latest technology and to be set up to allow for greater teamwork, creativity and multi-tasking. But an overwhelming number also expect their employers to provide an eco-friendly work environment that not just meets but exceeds minimum compliance standards.
For example, 96% of those surveyed said they demand an “environmentally-aware or friendly workplace,” and close to 60% said they expect their employer to go above and beyond the regulatory requirements. They want more than just strategically-placed recycle bins – they want real water conservation efforts and the highest level of energy efficiency to be standard operations at work.
The report recommends that employers bring their green initiatives front and center, and that they make sustainability policies a meaningful part of day-to-day operations, because the eco-savvy Gen Y’ers are clearly on the lookout for environmental-friendliness in all aspects of their daily lives.
“[Gen Y] preferences for an environmentally focused working environment are very strong; not only in the physical aspects of the workplace, but also in their way of working: flexible working, travel patterns, etc.,” said the report.
Are you listening, green hotels?Clearly, if the members of Gen Y are that determined to make eco-friendliness an integral part of their work-lives, they’re probably equally determined to exercise that same level of sensitivity when making travel and lodging decisions.
And there will be no fooling this knowledgeable bunch. They’ve grown up alongside the environmental movement. They know green-washing and lax or phony eco-standards when they see them.
If you’re ready to boost your hotel’s energy efficiency and water conservation efforts to prepare your property to attract a new generation of environmentally-aware consumers – contact EcoGreenHotel today.
From ENERGY STAR benchmarking of your energy usage to finding rebates and incentives to help pay for energy efficiency upgrades to targeted, industry-specific marketing services, our professional green team has got you covered.
Smart Landscaping Radically Reduces Hotel Water Costs
Save Money while Maintaining a Beautiful and Healthy Landscape
ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. –
Green Hotels want to make sure their lawn and landscape stays healthy and beautiful for the enjoyment of guests and improved occupancy rates. They must also think about controlling utility rates and being environmentally friendly.
Overwatering of landscape is often the major water waste culprit for a hotel property. But now, you no longer have to “guess” how long each watering zone should be operating thanks to the SmartLine System offered by Weathermatic, a global manufacturer and service provider of water conservation solutions for the outdoors since 1945.
EcoGreenHotel recognizes Weathermatic’s weather based watering technology that has proven to be an economical choice for properties of any size.
George Kenney of Soundview Landscape has installed SmartLine for several properties in Hawaii. “SmartLine has changed the way we irrigate properties,” Kenney states. “[When] we converted the landscaping at a condominium to SmartLine, the water savings have been so dramatic that the resort has asked to convert additional sites. If the next six months are equal to the first six months, the property will realize a savings of six million gallons in the first year of system operation.”
How Does It Work
Simply stated, it is a thermostat for the landscape. The SmartLine System replaces existing sprinkler timers that operate like the old egg timer.
It uses weather readings from a small, on-property weather station to automatically calculate precise run times for the plants in each zone using a proven evapotranspiration formula. It also uses sprinkler precipitation rates, soil type, and slope to apply water in run and soak cycles at a rate the soil can accept to prevent polluted runoff. In addition,” Brodie Bruner, VP Marketing and Sales for Weathermatic, notes, “this technology eliminates the need to have lawn maintenance crews manually adjusting controllers to match ever-changing weather conditions.”
Real Dollar and Water Savings
“More than 200,000 properties in over 80 countries are now using SmartLine,” saidBruner, “with SmartLine water savings ranging from 20 to over 60%.“
“The comforting part about converting existing controllers to SmartLine,” Bruner explains, “is that a typical installation can be accomplished in a few hours without any disturbance to existing landscaping or interruption of property use for your guests. Most importantly, this high efficiency system results in a return on investment of typically 12 months or less.”
You Only Know What You Measure
Weathermatic can provide a SmartLine Water Management Service that includes access to monthly reports detailing site-specific water savings and performance compared to water usage goals considering the actual weather conditions. This service,” Bruner explains, “acts both as a monitoring device and provides analysis to verify the entire irrigation system is working properly.”
Alen Hinckley, Yorkshire West Realty Advisors, saw the payback in less than three months and saved almost 4 million gallons of water after a year. With an effective annual 70% reduction, their group is rolling out SmartLine on all their properties. “It’s a no brainer,” said Alen.
SmartLine controllers are available in sizes for any property with configurations for wall mounting or pedestal installation. They can be wired or wireless for flexibility in mounting locations on any property. Several remote control options are available to insure easy irrigation field maintenance for landscape crews.
Feds and States Link Up for Energy Efficiency:
Excellent News for Green Hotels
In a move that will undoubtedly benefit green hotels across the country, the Obama administration recently announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy have teamed up to create an action group that will assist states in improving energy efficiency in residential, industrial and commercial buildings – including green hotels.
The group, called the State Energy Efficiency (SEE) Action Network, will partner with representatives of state and local governments, public utilities, business leaders and associations to assist states with their energy efficiency initiatives, including energy efficiency programs for homes and businesses,funding opportunities to invest in carrying out innovative energy efficiency policies, and improving the availability of energy usage information.
The action network’s goal is to jumpstart the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency, which calls for maximum energy efficiency to be achieved in the United States by 2025. SEE’s ambitious mission is to beat that deadline by five years. It aims to do so by providing technical assistance and funding “to states that seek to create new results-based policies and programs that encourage energy efficiency.”
For green hotels, we envision a lot of good coming out of this partnership. SEE’s fierce determination to beat the 2025 deadline by five years creates a much-needed sense of urgency that has been sorely lacking over the past few years. The network’s goal of promoting energy efficiency through a web of statewide, regional and nationwide partnerships means there may finally be a coordinated, orchestrated and cohesive effort to get the job done.
And additional funding means that good state and local energy efficiency programs that have great potential to make a lasting difference – those that never received quite enough funding to get off the ground, or those whose funding was slashed – (remember Florida’s outstanding Green Lodging Program that was gutted due to budget shortfalls in 2009?) may once again have a fighting chance.
Thanks to the formation of this new action group, we see a future filled with wonderful possibilities for green hotels to take advantage of energy efficiency programs, rebates and incentives. Members of the network began meeting a few weeks ago, so we should begin to see positive movement very soon.
EcoGreenHotel will be monitoring SEE events as they happen, and we promise to bring you the latest news about how the green hospitality industry – and your green hotel – can benefit.
The Best Business Strategy for Your Green Hotel, Energy Efficiency
At EcoGreenHotel, clients are always asking for our advice about how to go green in the quickest and most affordable way possible. And our advice is always the same: operating a truly green hotel is not a piecemeal proposition. It’s not about switching a few light bulbs or putting out some recycling bins (although those are all good things to do!).
No, developing and maintaining a green hotel requires a holistic approach that begins with a shift in the way everyone thinks about what it means to own and operate an eco hotel. At the precise moment that everyone from the owner on down starts thinking about environmental sustainability as a business strategy – that’s the moment your hotel begins to go green in a meaningful way.
Formulating a business strategy means that you meticulously choose and apply your business’s resources in a way that you think will bring some sort of competitive advantage in the future. Your team already does this at your hotel. Whenever you make a decision to upgrade the carpeting or offer a new amenity, you’re strategizing. You’re betting that the upgrade and new amenities will pay off in the long run through higher guest satisfaction, which translates into repeat bookings, which means increased revenue for your hotel. You are banking on that strategy.
But have you ever thought about how going green might be an equally good business strategy? Without a doubt, the most strategic way to go green is to increase your hotel’s energy efficiency.
Energy efficiency means using less energy to obtain the same quality of service. Here’s why energy efficiency should be the centerpiece of every hotel’s business strategy:
- The hospitality industry spends $3.7 billion a year on energy.
- Electricity use accounts for 60-70% of the utility costs of a typical hotel.
- Energy-efficient lighting can reduce electricity use up to 75%.1
Clearly, making your green hotel more energy efficient will positively impact more than the environment. It will positively impact your bottom line, and no matter how you slice it, that’s just good business!
EcoGreenHotel’s team of energy efficiency experts can help your green hotel plug energy efficiency into your business strategy, quickly and affordably. Contact us and get started today with our Energy Efficiency Analysis Program.
1 California Hotel and Lodging Association
The Gulf Oil Spill: What Good May Come
Gulf front resort hotels are taking an economic hit without one drop of oil soiling their pristine beaches
We’ve all watched in horror as the ever-growing BP oil slick reaches shorelines along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Not only did eleven men lose their lives in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but the spill that resulted from it is now fouling gulf waters in an area the size of some states – water that’s home to sea life including dolphins and sea turtles. It’s destroying precious marshlands that served as safe, healthy nurseries for all kinds of baby birds and fishes, right at the height of nesting and spawning season. It’s also wiping out the livelihoods of fishing families and obliterating the culture of some of the sweetest, hardest working people in America.
And it’s also adversely affecting the hospitality industry. In spite of BP’s multi-million dollar grants to gulf coast states to fund additional tourism advertisement, hoteliers from Texas to the east coast of Florida – many of whom are hundreds of miles from the nearest oil – report that they are dealing with a devastating economic fallout caused by cancellations from nervous travelers.
The director of Mississippi’s lodging association has estimated that beachfront bookings were down 50% with Memorial Day approaching, and the same was reported in the Florida panhandle. This is all in addition to the hit the region took from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the recession that followed right on the storm’s heels.
How much more battering can the hospitality industry take? How much more can any of us take?
If there was ever a wakeup call for America – including those in the hospitality industry – to get on board the energy efficiency and clean energy train, this oil spill is it. At last, it appears that Americans are finally getting the message that we must wean ourselves off foreign oil – and our dependence on fossil fuels in general – and turn our collective attention to developing clean, renewable energy sources for our country as quickly as we possibly can.
Imagine the good we could accomplish if we took all the brain power and resources we’re currently using to try and plug that oil gusher in the Gulf, and applied them to developing cleaner energy!
On a day when we’re all feeling so helpless and frightened at the devastating environmental and economic news we’re hearing today, imagining that kind of good – and vowing to work toward making it our new American reality – may just be the most righteous thing we can do.
The Energy Analysis: The First Step in Saving Your Green Hotel Some Serious Green!
If you read any hospitality industry news, you’ve undoubtedly seen stories of green hotels that are saving big money by becoming more energy efficient. You might wonder how they do it.
Indeed, hoteliers across the country are always asking us the same question: What’s the quickest, most affordable and meaningful way for our aspiring green hotel to begin reducing its negative impact on the environment while also saving money in the long run?
Our answer – Conduct an energy efficiency analysis!
An energy efficiency analysis, also known as the E2A program, is an examination and analysis of a building’s energy flow by an expert, for the purpose of identifying ways to monitor and conserve energy without negatively impacting overall productivity. In the case of green hotels, an energy audit would allow the property to figure out, quickly and precisely, how to reduce it’s consumption without having an adverse effect on the guest experience or on the green hotel staff’s work environment.
Here’s how it works: our EcoGreenHotel team of qualified energy efficiency professionals uses a variety of specialized tools to determine exactly how much energy is being used at the property. We take things like weather, occupancy, and other factors into account to arrive at an accurate benchmark, or measurement standard, that your green hotel can use to begin tracking – and lowering – its energy consumption over time and results in savings.
We use the most trusted measurement tools and hospitality-specific resources in the industry – chiefly those developed by ENERGY STAR – to calculate the benchmark, so you can be sure it’s a valid representation of your property’s actual usage.
Our team then recommends concrete ways to reduce consumption at your green hotel – ways you may never even have thought of. For example, after one energy efficiency analysis, we recommended that the hotel install wireless energy management guest room controls that interface with the hotel’s software to give management direct control over energy use in unoccupied rooms. The savings for a 100-room hotel?A whopping 30% of the total energy used for guest rooms!The system paid for itself in no time. Of course, the key is to find the right technology, provider and price for it to make sense.
Whether it’s implementing new policies (linen re-use, for example), upgrading electrical and HVAC systems, exploring alternate energy or looking for ways to maximize your energy purchasing power, we’ll turn you on to all the hundreds of ways you can get more bang for your energy buck.
And speaking of bucks, we’ll help you identify and apply for all the rebates, incentives, grants and other funding available to help green hotels like yours go even greener, and we’ll do it faster and more affordably than you ever dreamed was possible.
Are you ready for an energy efficiency analysis at your green hotel? Contact an EcoGreenHotel energy efficiency professionalat info@ecogreenhotel.comtoday and let’s get started!
Why? Read our Triple Bottom Line & Eco-Efficiency article for more information.
What is a Green Hotel?
Six Things No Green Hotel Should be Without–By Scott Parisi, President, EcoGreenHotel
It seems as if you can’t turn around anymore without running into something “green.” Nowhere is that more true than in lodging. Green hotels – or at least, those calling themselves green – are sprouting up everywhere, and travelers are becoming increasingly more aware of what to look for and how to judge whether or not a green hotel actually is… well, green!
You want your guests to know without a doubt that there’s no green-washing happening at your green hotel. I’ve put together a green hotel checklist so you can see how your property stacks up. Does your property have:
- Staff Buy-In and Ongoing Education: In a truly green hotel, everyone – from the front desk staff to the owner and everyone in between – fully understands, supports, practices and can communicate the property’s environmental policies.
- A Working (and funded!) Energy Strategy: Today’s green hotelsgo beyond just changing a few light bulbs and implementing a linen reuse policy. They analyze their energy efficiency – including conducting Energy Star benchmarking — and then seek out and apply for incentives, rebates and loans that allow them to make meaningful changes in their consumption.
- A Green Purchasing Plan: From locally-grown organic produce for its banquet salads to environmentally sensitive cleaning products and furnishings, green hotels know where and how to source the most cost-effective earth-friendly products.
- Green Hotel Certification: A green hotel designation from a certifying body that does on-site audits assures your guests that your property has met rigorous environmental standards.
- Specialized Marketing: Green hotels recognize that expertly targeted internet marketing is vital to their ongoing success in an increasingly competitive industry.
So how does your property stack up? I know it seems daunting to meet all those requirements, to track down trustworthy, LEED-Accredited Professional advisors, find rebates and incentives, train everybody, and still manage to run a lodging facility… who has time for that?
That’s why I created EcoGreenHotel to be a one-stop shop. We have trainers, engineers, financial advisors, purchasing and marketing specialists, thousands of quality green products and a certification program to meet the needs of every type and size of lodging facility at all stages in the green hotel process. We are LEED-Accredited Professionals specializing in energy efficiency. We can help your property achieve all of the above in the most cost-effective way possible, and we can start today.
Opening the Door to Volunteer Travelers at Your Green Hotel
In the wake of disasters in two of the world’s greatest tourist destinations (the 2004 tsunami in Asia, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, most recent Gulf Coast oil spill), tourists discovered that a vacation or meeting that includes volunteer time is a rewarding way to enjoy a trip away from home while also giving back to their host community.
In the last half of this decade, volunteer travelers, or voluntourists, have begun combining vacation or business travel with charitable work in and around their destination in greater numbers than ever before, and voluntourism has quickly become one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry.
These days, savvy green hotel marketers around the world are finding inventive ways to attract volunteer-minded travelers. Is your green hotel doing everything it can to appeal to voluntourists? Here are a few of the many imaginative ways that green hotels and trip organizers are rolling out the welcome mat for volunteers:
- The Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitor’s Bureau created a special program called “Meet Responsibly” which helps local green hotels garner more convention and meeting bookings. Meeting planners choosing to hold their event in the Fort Lauderdale area can choose from a menu of volunteer opportunities for their attendees – things like helping at a nearby food bank, cleaning up a park, beach or bike trail, or planting trees.
- Give eight hours of community service to a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and receive a 50% discount – or in some cases, a free night’s stay! – at over fifty Sage Hospitality properties across the USA.
- Volunteers at the recent 2010 Albany Tulip Festival in Albany, New York were treated to lodging discounts from several hotels during their stay.
- Green hotels along the Gulf coast – including the Port Inn and Mainstay Suites in Port St. Joe, Florida, are offering discounts to oil spill volunteers.
- The Four Seasons Austin’s “Pay It Forward” program links volunteer-minded guests with a food bank and a downtown beautification project and rewards them with up to 46% off their room rate.
Voluntourism is clearly here to stay, and figuring out how to get in on this lucrative new segment need not stress you out. We volunteer to help! If you need some fresh ideas for attracting voluntourists to your green hotel, simply contact us today and let’s brainstorm!
Energy Efficiency Analysis Program for Hotels Unveiled
Company Develops New Energy Efficiency Program for the Hospitality Industry
ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. – EcoGreenHotel President, Scott Parisi, announced the launch of his company’s new Energy Efficiency Analysis program, or E2A, designed to help green hotels assess their exact energy usage and develop cost-effective ways to reduce it.
“As other industries look to reduce their negative impacts on the environment, hotels have struggled to do the same without it having an adverse effect on the guest experience and the bottom line. Energy efficiency programs that have been good for other industries have not necessarily been applicable to hospitality for those reasons,” Parisi said. “Our goal was to develop a hospitality-specific program for evaluating and increasing the energy efficiency of hotels without sacrificing guest satisfaction or the hotel’s financial wellbeing, and we’ve achieved that with E2A.”
The energy efficiency process begins with EcoGreenHotel analyzing a year’s worth of each property’s utility bills using ENERGY STARS benchmarking system. An EcoGreenHotel E2A professional conducts an on-site visit to evaluate the property’s operations and efficiency. EcoGreenHotel then creates a customized, cost-effective energy efficiency strategytaking industry-specific factors, property specifics and region into account.
Once the analysis is complete, each hotel receives a comprehensive report, a cost-benefit breakdown for each of the recommended Energy Conservation Measures (ECM’s), a five-year cash flow analysis for each of the ECM’s, and a list of federal, state, local and utility-sponsored rebates, grants, incentives and loans that will help pay for them.
“Our mission is to encourage greater energy efficiency throughout the hospitality industry, and our new partnership with EPA’s ENERGY STAR Program will greatly enhance that effort,” Parisi said.
“Another thing that sets EcoGreenHotel’s E2A program apart is that it’s completely vendor neutral,” Parisi said. “Our recommendations for products, services and technology are based solely upon our clients’ best interests, and nothing more. We guarantee that each E2A program will result in an actionable plan that will save our clients money, lessen the impact on the environment and improve cash flow.”
To learn more about EcoGreenHotel’s E2A program, visit Energy Efficiency Analysis for Green Hotels.
