Going green puts hotels in black

COURTESY FORTY 1 NORTH
BRIGHT IDEA: Ninety percent of all hotel spaces, such as the Gable Room, pictured above, at Forty 1 North have daylight views, which reduce energy costs.
COURTESY FORTY 1 NORTH BRIGHT IDEA: Ninety percent of all hotel spaces, such as the Gable Room, pictured above, at Forty 1 North have daylight views, which reduce energy costs.

When those behind development of Forty 1 North, a waterfront hotel in Newport that opened in 2011, decided to incorporate substantial sustainability efforts into its design, they figured they were a little behind the times.
As it turns out, they were way ahead.
The boutique hotel in June became the first in Rhode Island to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, a designation that san serve as a marketing tool.
“I’m not sure how much we really put it out there. It takes a while,” said Peter Borden, one of the hotel’s principals and executive director of the SVF Foundation, a livestock cryogenics laboratory in Newport. “It’s not like everyone’s talking about [greening efforts]. I think it’s just becoming part of our everyday language.”
That may only be true depending on who within the industry is talking.
To hear destination marketers and meeting planners tell the tale, customers – booking groups most heavily among them – want “green” hotels.
“Meeting planners are like most members of the general public. They do their best to minimize their negative impact on the environment,” said Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau. “With increasing frequency, meeting planners are asking hotels to address issues of sustainability during the request-for-proposal process.”
A recent article in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research titled “Profiling the Potential ‘Green’ Hotel Guest: Who Are They and What Do They Want?” by University of New Hampshire professor of hospitality management Nelson Barber, reported that guests interested in staying in “green” hotels look for evidence of the property’s efforts, including certifications.
But whether incorporating sustainability practices fits within a brand’s financial plan and whether evidencing them for a piece of paper or plaque that verifies the effort is important to individual properties seems debatable. Since the R.I. Department of Environmental Management began running the Hospitality Green Certification Program in cooperation with the Rhode Island Hospitality Association in 2007, fewer than 40 properties have undergone the self-guided certification.
As of February 2012, only 23 hotels were listed as certified and, said Heather Singleton, senior vice president of education at the association, that could be due to having to improve their practices for renewal.
“I think with anything there’s going to be some attrition,” Singleton said. “I think there’s a lot of different ways that people are going green.”
The Hospitality Green Certification Program issues a workbook to interested hospitality businesses, including hotels and restaurants.
Businesses garner points for all environmentally-friendly practices, including, for hotels, using chemical-light cleaning products, increasing their recycling rates and getting guests to request less frequent changing of their bed linens to reduce water usage and energy consumption.
“I’d say [participation] is holding steady,” said Ron Gagnon, who runs the program for the DEM. “I don’t think it’s a lack of interest. I think it’s just something that it’s another thing on the list of things they want to do and need to get to. I think a lot of [hotels] are implementing these measures anyway.”
The Hotel Viking in Newport is among those certified under the DEM program.
General Manager Mark Gervais said the hotel has long had sustainability practices in place, including eliminating Styrofoam usage, offering free parking for hybrid cars, and reducing its electricity use.
Newer efforts have included replacing guest room shampoo bottles with shampoo shower dispensers. “We were throwing away hundreds of thousands of little shampoo bottles a year,” Gervais said. “I’d have to say 99 percent of guests love that. There’s always the 1 percent [who doesn’t] and that’s OK and we deal with it. For me, it’s the right thing to do.”
He also feels it’s the right thing to do for business.
When Hotel Viking gets requests for proposals for group business, he said, there’s always a request to include “how green you are.”
“And that can be a decision-maker,” Gervais said. “If rates [between] hotels are similar, they are going to pick the hotel that’s greener than the other one.”
The Hotel Viking isn’t going after LEED certification, at least not yet.
Ken DeCosta, chairman of the board of the Rhode Island chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, which runs the LEED certification process, said there hasn’t been an abundance of interest from the hotel community since the chapter was established in 2009.
“But there haven’t been a lot of new builds,” said DeCosta, senior vice president at Pare Corp. “I don’t know that as an industry it has seen a real benefit for the purist. I’m just not sure a lot of them have the motivation.”
Surely he is not talking about the folks from Forty 1 North.
At the hotel 90 percent of all space has daylight views, decreasing energy costs, and it uses 40 percent less water than similarly sized facilities.
The hotel also uses 30 percent natural gas for heating and has made itself 16 percent more energy efficient than other buildings its size.
“There was an opportunity [here],” Borden said. “We knew that people are looking for a unique reason to try a different hotel. Savvy hotel guests are looking for green accommodations. We really thought this was the right thing to do.” •

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