In the last few years my family has managed to vacation even with the threat of getting COVID-19. We took the precautions we needed to take and did just fine. In recent weeks we took our first trip to Europe since before the pandemic and enjoyed visiting some cities in England and Scotland—Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee. We tried to minimize our driving time because it seems folks in the U.K. have gotten things backwards and drive on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right and there are enough roundabouts to make...

In case you missed it, hospitality veteran Rachel Humphrey officially announced the formation of the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance this past week. I spoke with Rachel to learn more about the Alliance which first got rolling last fall just a few months after she retired from full-time employment after 30 years. With an interest in advancing women in hospitality, she reached out to some like-minded hospitality organizations to volunteer her time and quickly realized that the organizations were working on advancement issues but were not talking to each other. “I reached out to six groups,” Rachel said. “We realized...

For years the EPA has been relaying evidence that indoor air can be more seriously polluted than outdoor air even in the largest and most industrialized cities. Given that people spend approximately 90 percent of their time indoors, that is not a good thing—especially for the young, the elderly and the chronically ill. These groups often spend time in your hotels. With the coming of COVID-19 and its many related variants, air quality (and surface quality) has finally got the attention it deserves, says Randy Mount, Owner & CEO of Extreme Microbial Technologies, who I spoke with for this column....

I am sure many of you are familiar with the “dash” poem. It was written by Linda Ellis and the dash refers to the headstone time between we are born and the time we pass. A snippet from that poem: “What mattered most of all was the dash between those years.” As I get older—I am 60 now—I often think about that poem and philosophize a bit not only about all my life but the chunks that are chapters in the entire story. One important chapter certainly has been my time owning, publishing, editing, and writing Green Lodging News. That...

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, between 2015 and 2021, the number of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations more than doubled in the U.S. from approximately 13,000 to 50,000. The International Energy Agency reports that after a decade of rapid growth, there are now over 10 million electric cars on the road, representing about 1 percent of the global car stock. For 2030, the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario projects 300 million electric cars on the road and they will account for over 60 percent of new car sales, compared with only 4.6 percent in 2020. With such...

Housekeeping was highlighted in the news prominently the last few weeks. First, the Los Angeles City Council in late June passed a measure to limit the daily workload of housekeepers, offer overtime pay under certain circumstances, provide “panic buttons” to protect their workers from sexual harassment and do away with policies that automatically forgo daily cleaning. Many hotels and hotel companies across the nation did away with daily cleaning when COVID-19 first struck to reduce the spread of the disease and because of labor shortages. The measure, according to the Los Angeles Times, was strongly supported by Unite Here Local...

To what extent will two important Supreme Court decisions handed down in the past week impact you and your hotel/hotel company and what does each have to do with corporate social responsibility? I will not take sides on the abortion debate here and many questions remain to be answered, but the overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling could force you to decide whether to provide extra support to women in need of reproductive care. According to a June 30 New York Times article, many companies have already decided to cover the travel expenses of women in...

It was almost three years ago that IHG Hotels & Resorts announced that its entire hotel estate would switch to bulk-size bathroom amenities, with the transition to be completed during 2021. It was before the pandemic that IHG made this announcement, so it is understandable that the company did not reach its goal by the end of last year. That said, it did make a lot of headway and just this past week it announced a global collaboration with Unilever to replace bathroom miniatures with bulk amenities in more than 4,000 hotels in IHG’s mainstream brands. All IHG markets...

If you run a foodservice operation at your hotel, and yes that includes breakfast, you should pay attention to the many green products that were featured at this year’s National Restaurant Association Show. The list of exhibitors can be found here. It will take you some time to sift through the list of more than 1,700 companies but the time will be well spent given the opportunities to reduce energy, water, and waste at your hotel—and better protect yourself and your employees. Plus, the list can be sorted in different ways—by pavilions (Organic & Natural) for example, or by...

I have always had a strong connection to the United Kingdom. My grandparents and aunt were all born in Scotland. I have an ancestor who worked in a house of the Royal Family, have one aunt who attended the current Queen’s coronation, am somehow related to Robert Burns and throughout my life I have been a big Beatles fan. I have crossed the famous Abbey Road where the Beatles stepped for their Abbey Road album and this summer my family and I will travel “across the pond” to visit parts of England and Scotland we have not yet seen. I...