A guest first arrives at your property. When they do, those first few moments will likely be what they remember and set the tone for their entire stay and experience. So how do you imprint the green behaviors that you want your guests to have, or convey the “green facility” features that you want to convey? If you miss that window and your guest harbors negative perceptions of your facility, you will likely spend their entire stay trying to overcome that. The moment your guests arrive is an incredibly busy moment for them. They are likely tired from their trip....

Since its founding in 1989, Green Seal, a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., has developed standards for more than 375 categories of products and services, from paints and adhesives to cleaning products. These standards are designed to address the environmental and social impacts of a product using a lifecycle approach—considering everything from the raw materials used to make the product to the manufacturing process and the product’s eventual disposal. This evaluation involves independent, third-party testing protocols using state-of-the-art scientific technologies that are internationally accepted. One of Green Seal’s latest standards applies specifically to the hotel and hospitality industries for...

When it comes to green cleaning, an often underemphasized area is the need for matting at all hotel entries. Stopping dust, soils, and contaminants before they ever enter a facility helps reduce the need for cleaning and enhances indoor environmental quality. This is why it makes sense to place effective matting systems at the heart of any green cleaning program. The most effective type of mats are referred to as high-performance mats, which are higher-quality mats that have a performance life of several years. These mats are often part of what is called a soil “source control” strategy. Hotel managers, even...

Remember those days when we didn’t have to worry about bed bugs? When we were dancing in the brilliance of chemicals and our freedom from pests? Well, we were bugless, but our environment and wildlife was suffocating from the affects of harmful chemicals like DTT, and the pesticides were also affecting our own health. The change in pesticide practices has enabled the resurgence of bed bugs. But even if we kept up our bad habits, the bed bugs would have reappeared anyway. All those chemicals have only created a greater monster—they’re now resistant to many pesticides. International travel hasn’t helped us...

If you’re reading this you recognize that there is a portion of your customer base who values green initiatives and you are trying to reach those guests. Those guests may be groups who have made “green” a criterion for selecting locations for their meetings or annual conferences. Or they may be individuals who are extending their environmental values to all aspects of their life—even recreation and travel. But how do you showcase your green commitment? It’s not easy to see green. To showcase your green commitment, don’t overlook the value of prominent high-aesthetic recycling containers. Whether it’s fair or not,...

If you are an owner or manager of a hotel, sustainability is now your number one business risk factor. Bet you did not hear that at your last hospitality conference. Many forces are going to combine to drive up hotel ownership costs in the next three years. Besides the usual inflation type expenses, energy and employees, the big ones are going to be global warming taxation and new green building codes. Global warming has been a disputed topic of discussion for decades, championed by most scientists, a few public figures, celebrities, environmental evangelists, and a few progressive companies. Unfortunately, global...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.—Atlantic City sees “green” in more than just money these days. Since 2008, the Atlantic City Convention and Visitor’s Authority (ACCVA) has been overseeing environmentally friendly initiatives that have made the area one of the “greenest” meeting destinations in the United States. ACCVA is a member of the ASAE Convene Green Alliance (CGA), a partnership that allows the organization to learn about and share its experiences on how to lessen its environmental impact. “Atlantic City was an early industry partner of CGA, a community of nearly 1,000 association meeting professionals and hospitality partners,” says Kristin Clarke, Convene Green coordinator....

In the summer of 2011, after many years of smaller, hotel specific efforts to improve our purchases, Saunders Hotel Group officially launched its Sustainable Purchasing Policy (SPP) company-wide. It was comprehensive, it was detailed, it was specific while remaining widely applicable, and by the fall of 2011 it was most likely out of date. In broad terms, our SPP is designed to assist purchasing managers to select better products. We fully understand that what is better today may be standard (hopefully) tomorrow. Therefore the SPP will continually evolve. As it stands now, the SPP provides excellent support and information on...

Hotels have come a long way in embracing sustainability over the last decade, and for good reason. Evidence shows companies focused on sustainability outperform their peers. In the first quarter of Travelocity’s green hotel website, bookings for green hotels were 65 percent higher than for their non-green counterparts. Apart from competitive edge, operators cite financial benefit, guest satisfaction, brand enhancement, and staff retention and productivity as benefits of green hotel operation. The term “green hotel” has also evolved. Originally the term was a “catch all” for properties with almost any innovation that reduced water, waste, energy or chemicals, while saving...

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, we all have some contemplation ahead of us regarding the value of power continuity and what it means for long-term business success. For lodging in particular, power continuity must be viewed as an increasingly strategic consideration, given the critical role lodging plays in providing shelter during an extended outage. And it is not just those in traditional hurricane corridors like the Gulf and Southern Atlantic coastlines who must plan for power continuity in the event of extreme weather; hurricane strike zones have extended almost up to Maine, and heat waves, droughts and ice...