Next Sunday, hundreds of millions of people will gather in homes, restaurants and bars to watch the Super Bowl. As a Cleveland Browns fan (egads, it hurts to say that these days), I have little interest in the outcome, although I do admit it would be nice for Peyton Manning to finally win it all. I say that at the risk of forever alienating any Chicago Bears fan who happens to be reading this column. Here is one thing you probably did not know about the big game: The National Football League (NFL) will be planting trees and buying...

Carbon monoxide, a killer, should be the No. 1 indoor air quality concern at your property. Do you have detectors installed in your guestrooms? In other areas? If not, why? How can you truly be a green hotel if you are not doing all you can to protect your guests and staff from this silent, invisible danger? Hundreds lose their lives each year after having been exposed to carbon monoxide buildup in an enclosed area. Just last month in Key West, Fla., a 26-year-old man died in a guestroom at an upscale hotel. The man’s father nearly died as...

Congratulations to the City of Vancouver, Wash., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Fletcher Farr Ayotte (FFA) Architects for successfully obtaining Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the Hilton Vancouver Washington hotel. The 226-room property, owned by the City of Vancouver, was designed by FFA and is managed by Hilton Hotels Corp. Only a few other properties in the United States have reached LEED certification status. The Hilton Vancouver Washington earned a LEED-NC rating because it adhered to guidelines established for new construction. I recently spoke with Gerry Link, general manager of the hotel, and he was...

In the six months that I have been publishing Green Lodging News, I have been able to identify many of the companies that aggressively promote and practice sustainable operations. Some smaller companies with a handful of properties are doing an incredible number of things. In the overall “save the planet” scheme of things, their impact is small. At the same time, however, some of the largest hotel companies are doing almost nothing. If they did just a little, their impact would be huge because of the number of hotel rooms that would be impacted. One large hotel company...

At the recent International Society of Hospitality Consultants (ISHC) Annual Conference in Miami, ISHC members participated in a series of roundtable discussions to identify their Top Ten Issues in the Hospitality Industry for 2007. From one to 10, their list included the following: labor and skills shortages; construction costs; technology and keeping up with it; changing demographics and their impact on travel trends; future of hotel profits; branding; distribution revolution; travel restrictions; global emerging markets; and capital availability. Knowing that ISHC represents a significant part of the lodging industry’s brain power, it was disheartening that rising energy costs...

Before writing an article on furniture refinishing last week, I had never thought about the volume of furniture that the lodging industry must send to landfills each year. Mario Insenga, principal, The Refinishing Touch, Alpharetta, Ga., helped me understand the problem. His company diverts a great deal of furniture from the waste stream by refinishing it. Lately, his company has been saving many of the industry’s armoires by converting them to useable pieces. The hefty armoires have become outdated because of the introduction of flat screen TVs. When your guestroom, lobby, restaurant or meeting room furniture becomes outdated,...

I have always been fascinated by small inns and bed and breakfasts. It may have something to do with my addiction to reading “The Lord of the Rings” when I was a child. Frodo and his pals stopped at an inn called the Prancing Pony on their way toward Mordor. I always wondered what it would have been like to have stayed at that strange but magical place. I don’t believe there was anything “green” about that inn—except maybe a few elves. They may not always get the publicity that large hotel operators get but owners of small...

You may or may not have noticed but last week I added a “Sales & Marketing” department to my website. The link to the section can be found on the left side of each page just above “Green Associations.” The amount of industry activity in this area warranted the addition. Increasingly, hotel companies are greening their sales and marketing strategies to take advantage of the growing number of travelers for whom the environment is a priority. Many types of articles will appear in this section. Here are a couple of examples: Earlier this year, Jackson Lake Lodge announced...

When one of your guestrooms is vacant, even for just a few hours, how do you know whether or not the HVAC system is running at full blast needlessly? If you do not know the heating or cooling status of each guestroom at all times, you have got a problem. Do you really believe guests are going to treat your guestrooms like their own homes and watch the thermostat like a hawk? Think again. If you do not have a process or technology in place to monitor guestroom HVAC usage, you are throwing away your money and ultimately impacting...

Pretty impressive. That is my reaction to all of the green products that were on display at last week’s International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show in New York. Congratulations to the many vendors who have devised new ways to reduce waste and minimize energy and water consumption. Each company spent thousands of dollars in research and development on their products and thousands more just to be at the show. If you did not attend this year’s event, consider doing so in 2007. Discovering just one money-saving product can make the trip well worth the investment—even with the Big Apple’s hefty...