What role does sustainability have in Radisson Hotel Group?
We at Radisson Hotel Group are building on a long heritage of being a sustainable and responsible hotel business. Our philosophy consists of three pillars: Planet, People and Community. And this bears fruits: In the past 10 years, we were able to reduce our energy and water consumption by 30%. But we want to go one step further: Radisson Hotel Group aims to be carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve this, we have committed ourselves to the Science Based Targets laid out by the United Nations Climate Change Conference. This resulted in a fundamental transformation process within our hotel chain: We now need to convert our hotels into green buildings, use even more renewable energy and optimize all work procedures regarding their ecological footprint.
How can this ambitious plan be implemented?
The optimization of Building Management Systems constitutes an important step. Artificial intelligence will enable us to sensitize these to the current weather situation and this will allow us to save energy in a flexible manner. We are currently working on this with our maintenance teams.
Moreover, we are promoting environmentally conscious behavior in our team. With our campaign “Own your energy”, we encourage our employees to make 7 sustainability pledges which they should implement in their daily work routine. This includes many simple acts that have a considerable impact, such as turning off lights and appliances or giving guests only one key card per room. This way, it can be prevented that one key card is left in the guest room and the air condition is turned on when the guest is not even in the room.
Communication is key when it comes to the promotion of ecological awareness in our team. hotelkit simplifies all this for us as we can reach all employees on one centralized digital platform.
How exactly is hotelkit used to implement sustainable measures in Radisson Hotel Group?
We use hotelkit quite extensively to improve our work procedures, make them more sustainable and to guide our employees towards a more ecological way of working. Faulty appliances or those that are not maintained regularly consume an enormous amount of energy: With hotelkit, repair orders can be transmitted easily and quickly to the entire maintenance team and maintenance cycles can be set to recur automatically.
Moreover, hotelkit Housekeeping enables the implementation of our Green Housekeeping Option. Generally, many guests consider it sufficient if the room cleaning takes place only every second or third day. hotelkit enables us to communicate this information digitally to our housekeeping staff and do something good for the environment in the process.
Is sustainability meanwhile a deciding factor for booking an overnight stay?
Absolutely and countless surveys that have been conducted lately back this up. In a current travel survey, 72% of all those questioned indicated that that they wish for a broader offer regarding sustainable travel options. As an industry representative, I find that we do not only have to provide sustainable options, but we also need to make it as easy as possible for clients to make use of them. This is exactly why our Green Housekeeping Option is placed so strategically in the booking process; this enables the guest to make a sustainable decision with the push of one single button.
How does more sustainability affect expenditures?
Financially speaking, sustainability pays off. If you implement green energy in a building, this investment is amortized in the foreseeable future. In the medium and long term, profits are made. A pleasant side effect: A sustainable building has a higher market value and can be sold at a correspondingly high price.
It is also worth noting how much energy can be saved by making staff aware of sustainable measures and how to implement them in their daily work with digital tools such as hotelkit: That is 5% of the total energy costs!
Thanks to our Green Housekeeping Option, we also save a lot of expenses. I also would like to point out that we do not put the money saved into our own pockets. Instead, we reduce the prices of our F&B offers or support the charity “Just a Drop” with whom we have been working for a long time. This charity brings clean drinking water to people in countries in need and supports the construction of a well-functioning sewage disposal.
Does a switch to more sustainability in the tourism industry also impact the daily work of hotel employees?
I think we are moving towards a new way of working together in hotels. In the past, hotel employees had clearly defined roles, but today a hotel employee is active in numerous departments, from Housekeeping to Front Office. Tools, such as hotelkit, allow us to clearly depict work processes and enable us to guarantee more flexibility, diversity, but above all a higher quality in the working day.
About the hotelkit Green Housekeeping Option
If a hotel offers the Green Housekeeping Option, the guest can already inform the staff during the booking process that the room should only be cleaned on certain days, for example only every second or third day. Via the seamless PMS integration, this info is stored in the hotelkit Housekeeping Tool and marked with the label “Green Housekeeping”, this way, the cleaning crew knows exactly which rooms do not need to be cleaned on an everyday basis. A linen change and other major cleaning tasks are now no longer needed daily and leave more time for smaller daily tasks, such as emptying trash cans, which are automatically transmitted to the housekeeping staff. In this manner, there is no additional planning effort for the Executive Housekeeper. By reducing the amount of cleaning practices, the Green Housekeeping Option also conserves the environment and personnel resources.
Ensure more Sustainability with the Green Housekeeping workflow
About Radisson Hotel Group
Radisson Hotel Group is an international hotel group with nine distinctive hotel brands, +70,000 team members, and more than 1,140 hotels in operation and under development in +95 countries. The international hotel group is rapidly growing with a plan to increase its portfolio significantly. The Radisson family of brands portfolio includes Radisson Collection, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Radisson Individuals, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson, Country Inn & Suites by Radisson, and prizeotel, brought together under one commercial umbrella brand, Radisson Hotels. Currently, more than 300 Radisson Hotel Group properties already manage their daily operational processes with hotelkit.
The Group’s overarching brand promise is Every Moment Matters with a signature Yes I Can! service ethos. At Radisson Hotel Group we care for people, communities and planet and aim to be Net Zero by 2050 based on the approved near-term Science Based Targets. With unique solutions such as 100% carbon neutral Radisson Meetings, we make sustainable hotel stays easy. To facilitate sustainable travel choices, all our hotels are becoming verified on Hotel Sustainability Basics.
About the author
Michael Santner
Narratives about impoverished poets during his studies encouraged him to follow his passion in a secure job. In hotelkits marketing he takes care of packing the numerous ideas of his colleagues into exciting stories.
