Caesars Entertainment, Inc. has published its 2019-2020 PEOPLE PLANET PLAY Report on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). PEOPLE PLANET PLAY is the framework underpinning Caesars Entertainment’s CSR strategy, addressing the ways in which Caesars makes a positive contribution to people, the environment, and communities through its business and responsible conduct. The circumstances for this report are unique. It encompasses the time during the merger of Caesars Entertainment Corp. and Eldorado Resorts, Inc. that created Caesars Entertainment, Inc. and the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in property closures around the country for several months and a return to work with new protocols and...

Nephros, Inc., a commercial-stage company that develops and sells high-performance water purification products and pathogen detection systems to the medical and commercial markets, announced the results of a study this summer of water safety issues in light of the COVID-19-related nationwide shutdown. As further described in a new academic paper available on the biology preprint site bioRxiv, from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Nephros collected and analyzed 88 water samples from a variety of occupied and unoccupied buildings, using its SequaPath pathogen detection system. Key takeaways from the study include: Bacterial counts in unoccupied, underused building plumbing systems were significantly higher—between...

When cleaning your guestrooms after a guest has left pay special attention to the linens. In case you missed it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month released the results of some Chinese researchers indicating significant spread of the Coronavirus on sheets and pillow cases by presymptomatic travelers—a very good reason not to used shake linens upon removal from a bed. The researchers studied two travelers who had been transferred to a hotel for a 14-day quarantine. They stayed at the hotel for just one night before being transferred to a hospital after symptoms began to appear. Approximately three...

Different companies and associations have been implementing programs to help bring back meetings to their hotels. The CEO of Wynn Resorts recently talked about creating safe zones. The California Hotel and Lodging Association just released its “Clean + Safe Guidance for Meetings and Events,” providing COVID-19 health safety protocols for California hotels as they prepare to reopen for individual meetings and events. The Guidance incorporates recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the California Department of Public Health and Cal/OSHA and is aligned with CHLA’s guidelines for individual travel that was issued in April. The 11-page Guidance focuses on...

RAJA, Europe’s No. 1 packaging supplier, recently studied which countries are winning the war on municipal waste—an important study given that global waste is predicted to grow by 70 percent as soon as 2050. RAJA explored the municipal waste of 29 countries over five years to find out how they handle their waste, and whether they have been able to reduce it year-on-year. You can check out the study yourself here but here is what I found to be interesting: The world leader in recovered waste is currently Switzerland, recovering 100 percent of their municipal waste. However, this is...

Montalba Architects, the Santa Monica, Calif. and Switzerland-based architecture firm, recently completed three new Swiss projects, including newly imagined accommodations for the hospitality-concept, Whitepod. The new Whitepod eco-chalets, which are ideal for group and family travel, are equipped with modern conveniences and minimalist, sustainable design that allows the alpine landscape to take center stage. “Heritage and craftsmanship are at the heart of design, so we give considerable attention to making sure local, timeless materials are incorporated into each project to create a continuation of a user’s experience with both the space and the region as a whole,” says Founding Principal...

Can the lodging industry learn a few lessons from Walmart? So far there has not been a lot of zero emissions goal setting in our industry at the company level. A search on Green Lodging News produced an article from 2017 that details the plan of Vail Resorts, Inc. It has committed to zero net emissions by 2030. In the last two weeks Walmart announced a target of zero emissions across its company’s global operations by 2040. Walmart also announced it had committed to help protect, manage or restore at least 50 million acres of land and one million...

It was a little more than 11 years ago that I first wrote about the “Make a Green Choice” program that had been rolled out at a couple of hotels in Seattle and Kauai. For those of you not familiar with Make a Green Choice, it gave guests the option of opting out of housekeeping for a day or more. At the time, in exchange for doing that, guests were given either a $5 gift card for the hotel’s restaurants or the option of receiving 500 Starpoints as part of Starwood’s loyalty program. I applauded the program at the...

Temperature is but one of the measurements for determining whether a guest or employee is ill with COVID-19. That is why it should not be relied on entirely for any diagnosis. In looking for technology that tells you more than temperature, you may want to check out a company called binah.ai LTD. Its contactless app technology enables the extraction of a large set of vital signs and mental stress measurements based on the analysis of a video taken with any device equipped with a camera (smartphone, tablet, kiosk, in-car camera and many more). Binah.ai’s solution applies a unique mix...

One of the challenges in running a website by yourself is keeping the content current. One area of my site I check each year is the State & City Green Lodging Programs page. That section shrunk a bit this past year with the elimination of the link for an Arizona Green Lodging program and a program for hotels in Annapolis, Md. With any online search I conducted, I could not find those programs. The remaining programs in 20 states and three cities appear to be going strong but I am sure they were impacted dramatically by the pandemic. I...