(27 Aug 2018) LEADIN
Sustainable tourism is a growing part of the UK hotel industry, with consumers driving the demand to go greener.
Hoteliers are looking for new and innovative ways protect the environment and promote ethical values.
STORYLINE
Buttercups, crocuses and even strawberries sit amongst 10,000 herbaceous plants, growing over a 350 square metre wall at this hotel in central London.
The Rubens at the Palace hotel's 'Living Wall' not only looks striking - it provides a habitat for wildlife, improves the air quality in this busy part of Victoria and also helps insulate the building it grows on.
The historic hotel, situated opposite the Royal Mews of Buckingham Palace, has a longstanding commitment to sustainable tourism.
It's recently launched a "Go Green" initiative for guests, to help make their stay healthier and more environmentally friendly.
"The 'Living Wall' gives us the opportunity to support insects and wildlife, it helps us reduce energy consumption by keeping the building cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. It helps reduce localised drainage and it helps us contribute to keeping a cleaner air for the local environment," says the hotel's General Manager, Malcolm Hendry.
Guests opting for the hotel's "Go Green" package also get an outdoor exercise session, a discount for using the capital's public bicycle hire scheme, and a vegan afternoon tea.
"Veganism, it's not a trend anymore it's a culture, it's growing, you can't deny that. So being a hotelier is all about offering choices, you know we have our traditional afternoon tea which sits alongside, quite proudly, our vegan tea," explains Hendry.
Going green at The Rubens at the Palace is not a new concept.
The hotel has an internal Corporate Social Responsibility Team which looks for new ways to minimise the hotel's impact on the environment.
This includes sourcing energy efficient light bulbs, recycling candles, soaps and shampoos, and the elimination of single use plastics. The hotel aims to be completely plastic free by 2022.
Sustainability in hotels has never been more talked about, with recent research highlighting how harmful tourism can be to the environment.
The tourism sector causes around five percent of man-made CO2 emissions globally, according to estimates by the UN World Tourism Organization.
And consumers are rapidly becoming more aware of this.
"We've seen more and more people take part and choose to be part of our linen programmes, choose to use our recycling facility in the bedrooms. We see more and more people at that reservation stage asking, almost challenging us to prove that our business sits in line with their choices and their lifestyle before they commit to come and stay with us," says Hendry.
In Whitechapel, east London, this Instagrammable, design hotel called Qbic was designed with affordability and sustainability at its roots.
Describing itself as "the greenest hotel in London" it has already broken hotel benchmarks for reducing CO2, power and water use.
Created from a disused office block in 2013, 80 percent of the materials which were taken out of the building were put back in again to reduce environmental impact.
Its quirky pop up rooms called 'Qbis' take just three hours to install and contain a bed and bathroom, plus all the electricity and water required, which helps to keep costs and energy use low.
"It's a hotel room in a box, if you want to think of it that way. It takes us three hours to put together, it contains all the most environmentally components that we want it to have," says CEO of Qbic Hotels, Julie Fawcett.
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