“5% of total energy costs 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.”
Inge Huijbrechts
Global Chief Sustainability and Security Officer,
Radisson Hotel Group
Today guests have much higher expectations when staying at hotels, they expect more than simply a nice overnight stay and ultimate luxury. They also want to minimize their ecological footprint as much as possible. Inge Huijbrechts, Global Chief Sustainability and Security Officer at Radisson Hotel Group explains the advantages of implementing sustainable measures in the daily hotel routine and how hotel companies of all sizes can contribute to a green future:
A sustainable future
Radisson’s commitment to CO² neutrality
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.
Initiative for optimized facility management
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.
Encouraging environmentally conscious actions among the team
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 one key card can be left in the guest room and the air conditioner 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.
Sustainable work processes with hotelkit
Efficient repair and maintenance management
We use hotelkit quite extensively to improve our work procedures, make them more sustainable, and 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.
Green housekeeping workflow
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.
Does sustainability influence guest decisions?
Absolutely and countless surveys that have been conducted lately back this up. In a current travel survey, 72% of all those questioned indicated 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.
Financial benefits of sustainability: The payback of Green Energy
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.
New collaboration in hotels: hotelkit’s role in improving quality and flexibility
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, and above all a higher quality in the working day.
Learn more about hotelkit green housekeeping workflow
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 personal resources. Contact your hotelkit Customer Success Manager to activate the Green option in your hotelkit Housekeeping.
