Could your property be doing more in its efforts to be sustainable? In all likelihood, the answer is yes. Going green has never been more important for hospitality, and our role as carbon enablers means we have a responsibility to do more to reduce our environmental impact.
The good news is that doing so is both financially viable and not as hard to achieve as you might think. Cutting waste goes hand-in-hand with savings, while the demand for eco travel among guests continues to skyrocket. The Green Hotel of the Future explores seven key areas where you can become more sustainable without making dramatic changes to your property.
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What’s in The Green Hotel of the Future?
Our guide to going green will tell you how to embrace sustainable hospitality. The guide provides practical tips and advice across seven key areas, helping you to take concrete steps to reduce waste and energy use, as well as rethink certain processes. The seven areas are:
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- Going paperless
- Energy and water efficiency
- Single use plastics and other waste
- Food and beverage
- Eco-friendly products
- Supporting good causes
- Certification
You’ll also get inspiration from hoteliers around the world, as we look at what some eco hotels are already doing to operate sustainably. And of course, you don’t have to do it all on your own: there are plenty of great hotel tech integrations that will help you go green, and this guide explores some of the best.
Who should read this guide?
You should read this guide if you care about the environment and if you care about the long-term health of your property. Owners and General Managers, as well as anyone in Operations, F&B, Housekeeping and Marketing potentially have most to gain, although truthfully, anyone in hospitality should be able to take lots from the guide.
Read an extract
To give you a flavour of what you can expect, here’s a small extract from the one of the key sustainability hotel areas: F&B.
Rethink your food and beverage
When it comes to F&B, these two areas should give you food for thought: waste and provenance. Let’s start with waste. Almost half of all food served at hotels is wasted, and on average, food waste makes up 28% of a hotel’s total waste. These are not small figures.
Breakfast buffets are one of the biggest culprits. In Germany, a study found that 45% of food waste in hospitality is generated by buffets. Switching to an order-based system will reduce waste, but if you’re intent on keeping the buffet, studies have shown that actively measuring and monitoring food waste is a vital first step into detecting bad habits and devising prevention measures. Purely by understanding how and where waste happens, staff will begin to naturally change certain behaviors. Of course, measuring waste also tells you if you’re ordering too much. If 30% of your buffet food is thrown away, could you reduce your order by a similar amount?
The next question to ask yourself is: where is your food coming from? Are your suppliers local and sustainable, and do they provide organic produce? Not only does this help your community, it means that ingredients are fresher, with less carbon spent transporting them. And it’s also a great selling point. Guests are increasingly interested in sampling local cuisine, so you’re likely to see greater uptake in your restaurant and bar.
When it comes to food efficiency, companies like Oddbox have become popular in offices, providing fruit that would otherwise have been discarded, thus helping to reduce water and carbon waste. Could you do something similar for your staff?
Regardless of your own food tastes, make sure you provide varied vegetarian and vegan options. Meat-free diets are increasing in popularity, particularly across the western world. It’s estimated that 13 million Brits will be meat-free by the end of 2021 – that’s almost 20% of the UK population. If you want to be taken seriously as an eco hotel, your menu needs to reflect sustainable dining choices.
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