I have reported on the work of the Castell Project before. It is a nonprofit that implements initiatives that enable companies and their female employees to fully benefit from workforce participation. Earlier this year they released their Women in Hospitality Industry Leadership report. In that report it was stated that only one woman enters hotel development compared to 9.2 men. Interestingly, two large franchising companies—Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and Choice Hotels International—recently made announcements having to do with the advancement of female hotel ownership. Kudos to them both. First, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts announced a new program, “Women Own the Room” designed...

Two recent personnel announcements will have a significant impact on two companies heavily involved in green hotel/resort management. First, Raul Leal took over as CEO of SH Hotels and Resorts this past week. Starwood Capital Group is the parent company of SH Hotels and Resorts. Leal was previously CEO of Virgin Hotels for a decade until he stepped down in March. He will now oversee several brands underneath the SH umbrella, including 1 Hotels, Treehouse Hotels and Baccarat Hotels and Resorts. 1 Hotels launched in 2015 as a luxury brand with a strong focus on sustainability, including no paper or...

There will be those who deny it, even in our own industry, but climate change is the most important issue of our time and now is the time to take action to limit it. (What is your hotel or group of hotels doing about it?) I am sure many of you caught the news, but the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report was released on August 9 and what IPCC reported was frightening—with a small dash of hope. For this column I would like to share the entire IPCC press release: Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s...

My family and I just returned from a week of vacation in New Mexico. I love the West and it was a great opportunity to visit natural destinations as well as businesses. We ate out the entire time and one thing I encountered repeatedly was over portioning of food. At an eatery in Santa Fe, I ordered a chicken dish that easily could have fed several people. Perhaps you have encountered this trend in your travels? “When eating at many restaurants, it’s hard to miss that portion sizes have gotten larger in the last few years,” the CDC says. When vacationing,...

How do you honor your employees for their achievements in corporate social responsibility? Years ago, I worked for a publication called IndustryWeek and led a project that honored the world’s 100 Best Managed Companies. These companies, which tended to be manufacturing in nature, did not necessarily have a sustainability champion but they had figured out that it was in their best interest to honor their employee achievements with awards and celebrations of their successes. I guarantee you employees working for these companies tended to stay longer and were better compensated for their time. Similar surveys by publications such as...

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have launched a major new report addressing the complex issue of single-use plastic products (SUPP) within Travel & Tourism. The report is entitled, “Rethinking Single-Use Plastic Products in Travel & Tourism.” (To read the report in full, click here.) It is intended to help stakeholders take collective steps towards coordinated actions and policies that drive a shift towards reduce and reuse models. The report’s recommendations include redefining unnecessary single-use plastic products in the context of one’s own business; giving contractual preference to suppliers of reusable products;...

I recently sent an e-mail to all my contacts who sell amenities—soaps, conditioner, shampoo, toothbrushes, dispensers, etc. I heard back from nine companies. I asked the companies to feature one of their latest products. Be sure to check out the article. What is clear is that makers of dispensers especially have spent a lot of time improving their product offering in recent years. What is also clear is that amenities are taking on different forms. Hotel Emporium, for example, sells ECO PODs that include powder in containers made from 60 percent bamboo fiber, 30 percent sugarcane fiber, and 10...

It was 16 years ago, after I had been downsized by a well-known industry publication, that I noticed that other industries had a green publication, but the hospitality industry did not. With enough experience under my belt and some good contacts to help me along the way, I decided to create Green Lodging News. It took me a year to launch it, so this month Green Lodging News turns 15 years old. Happy birthday GLN. Each year that I mark another year behind me I write about it here because there are no guarantees in this life and to be...

It was more than three years ago that MGM Resorts International and Chicago-based Invenergy, North America’s largest independent renewable energy company, partnered on a new solar photovoltaic array that would generate 100 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. The MGM-Invenergy Solar Project was to be located 25 miles north of Las Vegas and MGM Resorts would purchase all the energy generated by the project to help power its 13 properties on the Las Vegas Strip. This past week, MGM Resorts launched its 100-megawatt solar array, the hospitality industry’s largest directly sourced renewable electricity project worldwide. The array’s clean energy now produces...

A few random thoughts as we wrap up the month of June and head into July. It is good to see the industry continue to rebound from a terrible 2020/early 2021. According to STR, the last four weeks ending Saturday, June 12, twenty-six states showed demand totals within a 10 percent margin of the corresponding period of 2019. Collectively, eight of those states sold more rooms for the four-week period than they did 2019. Demand gains are widespread and, so far in 2021, most states (28) have had at least one week that surpassed a comparable week from 2019. We are...