Home Personnel Profile Vail Resorts’ Rob Katz Advocates Sustainable Sustainability

Vail Resorts’ Rob Katz Advocates Sustainable Sustainability

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Name: Rob Katz
Title: CEO
Company: Vail Resorts, Inc.
Properties: Through its Mountain segment, the company owns and operates five year-round resorts. Through its Lodging segment, it owns and/or manages a portfolio of luxury hotels under the RockResorts brand, a number of hotels and condominiums located in proximity to its ski resorts, three destination resorts at Grand Teton National Park and six golf courses. Through its Real Estate segment, Vail Resorts Development Company, it holds, develops, buys and sells real estate in and around its resort communities.
My primary responsibilities: “My role is to support everyone at the company and help to align and push forward our mission.”
What keeps me motivated: “I am passionate about everything this company does. We have a unique opportunity to do the right thing for our shareholders, guests and the environment.”
My company’s most significant environmental accomplishment so far: “We have had many of them. Two that come to mind are our decision to offset 100 percent of our energy use through the purchase of wind energy, and our partnership with the National Forest Foundation that will support conservation projects in the White River National Forest in Colorado.”

Our biggest environmental challenge: “Our biggest challenge is keeping up what we have been doing. It is often difficult to be successful. Our food initiative (click here) was one of the most difficult projects we have worked on.”

What advice I would give to a hotel company considering going green: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew. The goal should not be to get to the end line but to continue down the path toward sustainability and always find ways to improve.”

BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Lately, Rob Katz has had food on his mind. Lots of food. As CEO of Vail Resorts, Inc., he oversees a company that serves 2.5 million lunches every winter. That’s what makes Vail Resorts’ recent decision to transition to organic, hormone-free meat and dairy products at its five mountain resorts so impressive. According to Katz, it will be the travel industry’s largest undertaking to offer these types of products.

Followers of Vail Resorts should not be surprised by this recent decision. The company has rolled out one major initiative after another over the past year—clearly making it one of the lodging industry’s most progressive proponents of environmental and social responsibility. Many of Vail Resorts’ programs have been announced under Katz’s watch; he was appointed CEO of the company in February 2006.

Prior to joining Vail Resorts, Katz had been associated with Apollo Management L.P., a private securities and investment management firm, since 1990. He says his interest in the environment has a lot to do with the person he married.

“I married an environmentalist,” he says. “My wife used to work for the Environmental Defense Fund. Her motto is ‘to do well by doing good.’”

Given the location of its properties, doing the right thing for the environment makes a lot of sense for Vail Resorts.

“What we are really selling is the environment,” Katz says. “Our product is the outdoors and we have a responsibility to protect it. Our goal is to provide exceptional experiences for our guests.”

Ever Vail Could Set LEED Development Mark

Vail Resorts rocked the lodging industry earlier this year when it announced the development of Ever Vail, what will be the largest LEED-certified, multi-use resort project in the nation. Still awaiting final approval, Ever Vail will consist of more than 1 million square feet of mixed-use space including residences, a hotel, offices, retail shops and restaurants, mountain operations facilities, a public parking garage, a new gondola and related skier portal and a public park.

The following is a summary of just a few of Vail Resorts’ other green initiatives:

• In June 2007, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded the company LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI) certification for the environmentally-friendly design, construction and operation of its 56,000-square-foot corporate headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado.

• The Chateau at Heavenly Village, a $420 million, 11.53-acre hotel resort redevelopment has been registered with the U.S. Green Building Council for LEED certification by the project’s developer, Lake Tahoe Development Company, LLC. In addition to two sustainably-built luxury condo hotels, plans include LEED certification of a 16,000-square-foot RockResorts Spa, 50,000-square-foot convention center with 21,000-square-foot pre-function area, 1.5-acre park and a collection of shops and restaurants.

• Vail Mountain has the largest on-mountain recycling program of all ski resorts in North America. Vail’s current program recycles nearly 70 percent of on-mountain waste, which equates to approximately one pound per guest. On average, Vail recycles 100 tons of material per month during the ski season.

• At its five mountain resorts, upgrades to snowmaking systems have resulted in a 33 percent greater output capacity, better snow quality and an overall 25 percent increase in electrical efficiency. Each new automated snow gun uses 50 percent less electricity and water than the guns they replace, and the systemwide upgrades save an estimated 15,000,000 kWh in an average snowmaking year.

Less than two years after taking over the helm at Vail Resorts, Rob Katz has proven that profitability and corporate responsibility need not cancel the other out.

“I believe in sustainable sustainability,” he says.

To learn more about Vail Resorts’ environmental programs, click here.

Glenn Hasek can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.

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