How can I be sustainable without increasing my costs?

Good environmental practices can improve your hotel’s performance, create superior guest experiences, and reduce your costs. The easiest way to do this is by changing employee behaviour, using energy-efficient equipment, designing more effective processes, and adopting a sustainable business strategy.

Here are the top 5 tips to help you be innovative, agile, and sustainable without increasing your costs:

1. Adopt a sustainable business strategy

Creating a well-planned sustainability strategy can be a catalyst that ignites innovation in your hotel’s business model. By redefining your goals to incorporate sustainable thinking into every aspect of your operation, from purchasing to waste prevention, you can meet the needs of your guests and achieve increased profits.

2. Review your purchasing procedures

Becoming greener means using appliances and equipment with higher environmental performance. The goal is to implement a purchasing procedure that lightens your global carbon footprint while improving the quality of your hotel’s products. The good news is there are many hotel-specific products that have been engineered with sustainability at the heart of them.

3. Energy-saving program

One of the first steps you can take in becoming more sustainable is by implementing an energy-saving program. By utilising your new purchasing procedures you could potentially reduce your waste, power and water consumption by half.

Let’s look into this further…

Power Consumption:

Are you using the most energy-efficient lighting? LED lighting is a great place to start, and has been proven time and time again. Also, look at the appliances you have in your rooms. Don’t forget how important purchasing hotel-specific products over domestically manufactured appliances is. This is mainly because the wattages can greatly vary. If you choose hotel quality items the wattages will be lower which in turn will lower your power consumption costs. To help you kick-start your sustainable journey check out energy-saving appliances such as kettles, irons and minibar fridges.

Water Consumption:

Are you maximizing your loads of laundry? Whether you are washing your guest towels or just your cleaning cloths, ensure the machine is at full capacity. You can also get your guests to help reduce water usage by reusing their towels instead of requesting new ones. Nowadays many hotels and motels are putting signage in their bathrooms asking guests to hang their towels up if they are happy to reuse them. A lot of guests are actively doing this because they are more environmentally conscious and understand what impact their actions have. This ultimately reduces your costs as less water and power are required to wash them.

It’s also important you don’t overlook the size of your kettles. In most cases a hotel room only has 1 or 2 guests. As creatures of habit, people tend to fill the kettle to the brim. If you give them a domestic kettle (typically 1.7 litres) vs a hotel-specific kettle (600ml, 800ml or 1000ml) this can significantly reduce your water consumption and also power consumption because it takes less time to boil.

Reduce and Recycle Waste

Look at the waste your hotel is disposing of every day, whether it be from your staff, guests or appliances you will find this very helpful. To reduce waste stop throwing away faulty products and work with your supplier to get maintenance tips or spare parts. If you’re dealing with bathroom amenities such as single-use toiletries, refillable dispensers or cartridge systems The Hotel WEKA, an end-to-end recycling program, makes eliminating plastic waste easy.

4. Become educated on best green practices

Education around sustainability is essential to your hotel becoming green. By educating your staff and getting everyone to participate in the movement you will instil the values and principles needed to improve your hotel’s performance. Once you’ve educated your staff, it’s a great idea to set some goals. Having an energy-efficient and waste-wise team will go a long way in reducing your costs.

5. Help your hotel guests be more sustainable

Hotel sustainability is a team effort. It must be the focus of all your employees, but even more importantly, guests must be on board with the effort in order to make a significant difference. The hotel-guest relationship is a partnership, after all.

By introducing eco-friendly incentives to all multi-day guests your hotel staff can work together with them to achieve your sustainability goals. For example, if your guests elect not to have their room serviced or cleaned every day consider offering them a voucher for food, parking or a massage at the hotel. This will encourage your guests to use the hotel facilities by dining in, parking for free or enjoying a spa treatment. This will save your housekeeping team’s time and boost your bottom line and create moments of delight for your guests.

In summary, you know you can make a difference but it's about what kind of difference you want to make. Your guests and team are at the heart of what you do and that's why encouraging and educating them is so important. There are many ways to create little or no environmental waste and once you determine what works best for your property you will be able to make a world of difference.

Get in touch we’d love to help you be innovative, agile, and sustainable without increasing your costs.

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