From drawing water from lakes to plant-based menus, Sue Fea reveals how several hotels are putting their money where their clean, green mouth is with some interesting green initiatives.
Globally, hotels are going to great lengths to conserve energy and be sustainable and it when it comes to saving the planet New Zealand is not lagging behind – we’re putting our money where our clean, green mouth is.
New Zealand Hotel Council executive officer Rachael Shadbolt says 10 years ago being environmentally aware may have been a clever, unique selling point, but these days it’s “simply expected”. Eighty of the 130 council member hotels carry Qualmark Enviro Awards (65 of these hotels achieving Gold and Silver accreditation), this excludes hotels and chains committed to other programmes such as Green Globe, now known as Earthcheck.
Hotels have been finding that once the Enviro processes are established they’re achieving significant cost reduction in waste, thanks to increased recycling, more efficient lighting and heating options, and reductions in laundry costs by encouraging guests to reuse towels for example.
“Interestingly for a few years in the mid 2000s the environmental issue was a hot topic. Since the global financial crisis hit and other world events have taken centre stage the focus on “clean and green” appears to have diminished a little, but this will no doubt be short lived.”
Green practices are now well entrenched in hotels, says Shadbolt, not simply because it’s a good look to be environmentally aware, but because it makes good business sense, it’s accepted as best practice worldwide and is increasingly expected by guests.
Sudima Hotel Auckland Airport chief executive Sudesh Jhunjhnuwala has also gone to great lengths to incorporate sustainability into the new $30million, 153-room hotel. “It’s been a big focus, we’ve made a conscious decision to ensure we are sustainable and it’s not just a show – it’s not just about putting in a solar panel, there’s a lot more involved.”
Rainwater is collected off the hotel roof for use in the toilets, heat is generated by kitchen chillers and a deep freeze is used to operate the air conditioning in rooms. All the windows are double-glazed, lighting is LED – no mercury or gases and it’s computer controlled, the car parks have no kerbs so that rainwater can be filtered through the adjacent flowerbeds before entering the waste water system and the coffee is organic and fair trade.
Jhunjhnuwala is most proud of is his chilled beam air-conditioning installed in all rooms, a system never used in hotels in the southern hemisphere before. It’s a lot more energy efficient, but the best part is there’s no noise, no refrigerant and there are no moving parts. The system has an output of 40 litres of fresh air per minute, compared with the standard 25 litres per minute, and it keeps rooms at an ambient temperature.
But it wasn’t easy to find a New Zealand company willing to install chilled beams. “Nobody was interested in supplying us, Economach, an air conditioning company in Auckland, were the only ones willing to do it for us. They totally redesigned our standard system…initially we were trying to put in heat exchangers to heat the water but they’re not so efficient.”
There are no fridges in the rooms either: “In our experience people don’t use them, which means no noise, no chemicals and no gases.”
It’s all come at a high cost, but Jhunjhnuwala believes he’ll more than recoup the benefits. “We did spend a lot of money….I think it’s added, at least on electrical services, about 50 per cent to our budget and on mechanical it’s added about 60 per cent – every day the bills keep coming in.”
But it will be a big marketing push for their hotel – guests may not be willing to pay extra for a ‘green’ hotel but if two hotels are priced the same they will always use one that’s ‘green’ he says.
It’s even more important with the Rugby World Cup coming: “It shows we’re on the cutting edge, not just by name – 100 per cent pure, we’re doing it properly.”
Newly-built hotel, the Hilton Queenstown, is also going out of its way to incorporate sustainable practices. General manager of the new lakeside Kawarau Village resort complex Marlene Poynder says water is drawn from Lake Wakatipu for the hotel’s heating and cooling systems. “That water is used both hot and cold and then it’s cooled and goes back into the lake to protect the environment.”
In line with Hilton’s global standards, utilities, gas and power are a huge focus as they’re such expensive commodities. “We’re looking to make savings wherever we can,” says Poynder.
Any water usage in the hotels will be tracked and reduced wherever possible. There’s also going to be a strong focus on local produce and organic foods.
Accor Hotels is known globally for its sustainability and its 29 New Zealand properties, across eight brands, soon to be 31 hotels and nine brands. Accor NZ director of marketing Lucy Acott says a genuine passion for sustainability is now an intrinsic part of company culture.
“Sustainability is one of the six pillars of our strategic road map, in turn linked to general managers’ performance criteria and bonuses,” she says.
Initiatives include Accor’s annual Earth Guest Day, when employees organise activities in their communities working with councils and the Department of Conservation on projects such as large scale tree plantings, clean-ups of green spaces and waterways, weeding and mass rubbish collections.
In December 2009, Accor introduced Plant for the Planet, in which a tree is planted in reforestation projects for every five towels reused in its hotels. The hotel chain says housekeeping staff keep track of this daily and it’s also encouraging the reuse of bed linen.
Each hotel is expected to reduce energy and water consumption by 3.5 per cent this year compared with last year and usage is tracked and reported monthly. Staff members also work on social sustainability initiatives, raising substantial funds for Accor’s Cure Kids and Aids Foundation charities.
Acott says all of this is only achievable because employees have taken ownership of the company’s ‘guests of the earth’ culture and brought it to life. “It’s our employees’ time, effort and passion – and that of all our stakeholders – that is crucial to its success.”
Wherever possible, suppliers following the same ethos are used from sustainable coffee and tea, preferred printer Wellington Business Forms and stationery supplier Corporate Express to Resene’s Enviro-Mark Gold paints and enviro-friendly toilet paper.
Director of sales distribution and marketing for Accor’s Hotel St Moritz in Queenstown, Jo Finnigan says with the Rugby World Cup coming up there’s a global expectation that New Zealand will have its clean green image to the fore.
It was the first hotel in the resort to put in its own major recycling plant, an initiative spearheaded by executive chef Avi Yochay. This was long before any formalised recycling was introduced to Queenstown by the district council in 2005. Milk waste has even become one of St Moritz’ signature menu items – homemade mozzarella, ricotta and yoghurt.
The hotel has a very high standard of packaging to reduce the masses of polystyrene that products, such as salmon, arrive in – these are all sent back for recycling. Chef Yochay sources as much local product as possible to keep the carbon footprint down and the hotel also offers a fully organic, sustainable dinner menu for conferences, called ‘Organic New Zealand’.
This features wild hare, culled because it’s a pest, organic bread, watercress pesto Central Otago olive oil, wild venison and is served with wine from Amisfield’s sustainably-produced Kawarau Estate range. Five dollars a head off these menu sales is donated to Cure Kids.
As a Qualmark Gold-rated hotel, shower water is restricted, power saving light bulbs installed and paper recycling bins are offered in rooms, which is especially important with the masses of brochures visitors to Queenstown collect each day.
A Queenstown recycling firm even collects the hotel’s used frying oil. Power saver switches in every room are important to encourage guests, not used to the cold, to minimise electricity.
Heritage Auckland’s stand-out in sustainability is its ‘plant-based dining.’ General manager Graeme Back says they certainly get more recognition from international tourists than meat-loving Kiwis for their entirely vegan offering but Kiwis are becoming educated.
Vegan tapas, soghurt instead of yoghurt and buckwheat pancakes with natural honey all feature alongside polenta and vegan-based muffins. “It’s about demystifying the vegan-style elements and showing people there are some sensational flavours available.”
Saving money and energy
Several hotels in New Zealand are already reporting big savings using the latest guestroom energy saving devices from Brantas International Technology’s Inncom range. Brantas director Jan Strijker says the Inncom energy-efficient system is saving hundreds of hotels money and energy around the world but it’s relatively new in New Zealand.
The system interfaces to air conditioning units and lighting circuits using intelligent digital thermostats to control heating and cooling, as well as power output in rooms. “Traditional hotels put in a key card system which flicks the power on but we’re replacing that, it’s not very guest friendly opening the door into a dark room.”
Under the Brantas Inncom system a door switch detects entry and kick starts the system, which communicates to a digital thermostat and a “person in room’ motion sensor. “The system works even if someone is asleep in bed.”
The beauty of the system is it’s all controlled by the parameter settings in the digital thermostat which replaces the old mechanical option, removing the risk of guests feeling a bit chilly and cranking up the thermostat until they overheat the room.
“You control temperature set-back and optimise settings at 22.3 degrees or whatever, and that’s exactly what the room will heat to,” says Stijker.
Logan Hutchings, chief engineer at Wellington’s newly-refurbished Amora Hotel has already found the Inncom thermostat managing his HVAL (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) system saves him a lot of strain on compressors. Previously these had to be re-built costing several thousand dollars twice a year – not now.
Amora is the second hotel to purchase the digital thermostats in New Zealand, after The George Hotel in Christchurch which has been operating the entire fully-integrated system successfully for some time with great results.