Greenview has released another report—this one entitled “Green Venue Report 2014—The State of Convention Center Sustainability.” It was produced in partnership with Twirl Management. The study’s organizers aim to answer the following questions in the report: What are the individual and collective footprints (positive and negative) of events taking place within convention centers? What are best practices in the industry that more convention centers (and their event organizer clients) can benefit from? What innovative efforts by convention centers should be recognized and celebrated?According to Cara Unterkofler, Director, Greenview, a total of 37 convention centers, all of which were in...

This past Tuesday (October 14), the Greater Miami & The Beaches Hotel Association honored hotels and allied businesses that are leading the adoption of sustainable hospitality practices at its 2nd Annual Sustainable Hospitality Awards. The event took place at the InterContinental Miami and I was asked to be a guest speaker at the event. Approximately 120 people attended. It was fun watching each of the award winners receive their awards—in categories ranging from Energy Efficiency & Conservation to Communication & Education. There is nothing like an awards ceremony to get folks charged up about sustainability.I have been seeing an...

It was 11 years ago that Jack DeBoer, known in the industry as the founder of extended stay lodging, opened the first Value Place hotel in Wichita, Kan. Whenever I travel, it seems like I am always passing a Value Place. There is good reason as Kyle Rogg, President and COO of the brand, told me this past week that there are now 184 open in the United States. Seventy-eight of those properties are company owned and the remainder franchisee owned. “We have about five company owned and five franchisee owned in construction,” Rogg said.Value Place’s mission is to...

Caesars Entertainment recently released its Corporate Citizenship Report 2013-2014. Entitled “Serious Play,” the report outlines the company’s successes and challenges in areas including people, guests and communities, and planet. The report is one of many that have been released in recent months by our industry’s largest companies. In this column I will highlight just a few of Caesars Entertainment’s accomplishments in the area of environment.Take a quick glance at the report and you will notice the company made significant improvements in how it deals with waste. From 2012 to 2013, the company’s diversion rate increased from 24 percent to...

The luxurious Dent Island Lodge is located on Stuart Island in British Columbia, northwest of Vancouver. The resort sits adjacent to a network of waterways that connect to the Pacific Ocean. The property’s location is remote yet it is easily accessible by water taxi and seaplane. While its location is its strong point from a get away from it all, touristic standpoint, the resort is reliant on diesel fuel to power the generators that produce its electricity—a rather costly approach to power generation and not very sustainable.In the first quarter next year, Dent Island Lodge will test a highly...

It is more than five years now since I first posted an article about beekeeping on the Green Lodging News website. That article referred to The Fairmont Washington, D.C. and its three rooftop hives that included 105,000 Italian honey bees. There are now almost 20 articles on our site that mention beekeeping. I wrote a column about the topic in 2010. It included some beekeeping best practices. For example, did you know that if you are going to have hives on your property, you need to have at least two hives and they should not all be oriented in...

Eight months ago Governor Jerry Brown declared the drought in California a “State of Emergency” and asked Californians to reduce their daily water consumption by 20 percent. Six months later the California Hotel & Lodging Assn. debuted a “California Water Resources” page on its website to help hoteliers in California link to water conservation ideas and rebates and incentives that make it easier to invest in efficient fixtures and other water-conserving items. (One example: In San Diego County, the SoCal Water$mart Program provides commercial customers with $100 per toilet rebates for replacing select older, inefficient toilets with new 1.28...

What impact is climate change having on tourism in your state? Do you know the science behind it? The Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) cares enough about the issue that it recently partnered with the University of Hawaii to produce a report entitled, “Climate Change Impacts in Hawaii: A summary of climate change and its impacts to Hawaii’s ecosystems and communities.” The report addresses such questions as, “What does climate change look like?” and “What is the current state of scientific knowledge regarding climate change globally, and how does it relate to Hawaii specifically?”“HTA is a knowledge-based organization and we...

Assuming the project gets the approval of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission in the next few weeks and is not appealed by voters in November, Mohegan Sun Massachusetts could end up being one of the greenest construction projects in U.S. lodging history. To be located at Suffolk Downs in Revere, Mass., the $1.3 billion destination resort will include a main casino hotel and boutique hotel totaling 500 rooms and over 170,000 square feet of casino floor space and 5,000 gaming positions. Gary Luderitz, V.P. of Operations & Development for Mohegan Gaming Advisors, told me this past week that the project...

Marriott International just released its 2014 Sustainability Report. It is the third time Marriott has issued a Sustainability Report using guidelines established by the Global Reporting Initiative. Different this time is how Marriott is presenting its report. One can either read it as a whole or select from a series of Issue Reports in areas such as Environmental Performance, Community Engagement, and Ethics and Human Rights. This new approach, according to Denise Naguib, Marriott’s Vice President of Sustainability and Supplier Diversity, makes the report a lot more readable. “The graphical changes are also much more appealing,” she told me...