By: Hasan Zarei

Zarei.hasan@hotmail.com

yazdfarda"Nowadays everyone understands the vital role of hotels to preserve natural resources and help saving our planet earth. It is a case beyond the managerial methods or a strategy done within the organizational structure of the hotels. The demand for a kind of green way of living is fast growing in every single section of the society.  In mass Medias, the case is normally represented as a global warning and life threatening crisis. They sadly push in mind water is the core challenge resulting in the next world war.

It’s really hard finding someone without being terrified by the horrible future awaiting our eco systems and natural resources. These Medias helped a lot changing the methods of living, farming, trading and travelling to be more and more loyal to what planet earth endowed us when no warnings laid there. Beyond all these positive changes, we cannot ignore the big paradox still remaining; world is yearning toward devastation and fatal levels of pollution.

Technology has done a lot to ease the way of being green. Modern communication methods and thousand other innovations helped moving faster in the path of preserving natural resources. It also did a lot in modern hospitality and hotel management strategies. Hardly can we find a manager being stuck to the traditional methods of management. Technology and its essential role in modern management system to help preserving natural resources is taught and introduced in any hospitality school or college.

From long time ago, many hotels have started promotional procedures and solutions to catch the best green results. It was a matter of cost and also cultural resistance at the beginning. Since the changes happen rapidly in our modern age, it became smooth quite soon and even the guests felt involved in the green policies and environment protecting procedures.

Guest involvement is the key element for many hotel managers to succeed the green policies. Hotel industry is a wide variant business that covers the highest diversity range of guest and customer needs from low budgets to luxury ones. It seems the demand is a unified tie between the guest and hotel organization; urging the other to respect natural resources and planet.

For many hoteliers it is really amazing to do the strategies resulting in saving natural resources and help controlling the pollution.  At the same time, they have to be loyal to what promised to the guest based on the level of the hotel and fulfill the expectations. Finally it really works when the guest interacts.

Let’s review some elements and solutions that help every hotel, beyond its star level, to be green and earth savior.

• BMS System

The professional and high capacity BMS system not only brings many electricity savings and good maintenance costs for hoteliers, but also eases the service procedure. One single panel inside the room or a small magnetic card can do more than tens of staff for the hoteliers. They can manage what they really feel at the moment and all is available; thanks to nicely designed BMS systems.

The hotel managers also gain many profits through a practical BMS system. Loads of paperwork is pushed to the margin and the checklists get limited. The central air conditioning, telecommunication systems, fire alarms, CCTV cameras, intelligent lightning systems and many other procedures are easily controlled.

• Mail Servers inside Hotels

Tons of papers are needed to handle the inside communication of the hotel staff. When it comes to high capacity luxury hotels having thousands of staff, how many single sheets of papers or forms are printed out or penned down in the hotel for organizational intentions?

Mail servers are designed to smooth the communicational methods. They save the time and also expand the options from colorful designed letters and forms without printing limitations to the capacity of transferring different formats in a single second.

• Do we really need Bathtubs?

It’s a high challenge whether bathtubs do satisfy the guest or not. When it comes to the luxury hotels, many owners and also hotel advisors have the pre-assumption that it is necessary to have bathtubs in the rooms. Many guests also have the same expectation when paying for an upper-scale or luxury hotel. Even some boutique hotels all around the world design bathtubs in their rooms to offer more comfort for the guests. Undoubtedly, designing bathtubs or shower cabins in the hotel rooms depends on many criteria and one can never come to a definite choice.

Recent studies and guests feedback proofs that many of them feel better with shower cabins. Here it is not really the amount of water (at least 250 Liters per person) used by every guest for washing purposes that matters. Shower cabins give better feeling from sanitation point of view; introduce high diversity of room designing; are easy to handle by the room maids and also enhance the safety items since bathtubs may cause slipping.

• Guest Shampoo and Soap

It is again the matter of hotel star level. Modern hotel industry is changing every day and yearns towards mentality. Recently, many hotel brands, especially budget and mid-scale hotels have started using wall mounted liquid shampoo and soap. Many of them are in high quality and when it comes to preventing chemicals really helps a lot. The guests also do not feel mistreated and feel comfortable using liquid versions of shampoo and soap.

• Bathroom Amenities Package

Bathroom amenities are the items that directly affect the guest satisfaction. These amenities are selected based on the level of service offered in hotels. The type of the hotel; from resorts and luxury ones to small motels and budget brands, really differentiates the selection of amenities available in the rooms. Even being a family hotel, an airport hotel or one of those lovely boutiques brings many changes.

What is more important for smart hotel managers is the method and the decoration how to present these amenities. There used to be the old standard of putting these amenities in especial boxboards; and there still exists. But the mode is really changing. Too much money, time and space must be laid to prepare these boxboards; the hard procedure of printing added to all.

Genius maids and housekeepers who have excellent taste in decorating in professional way can be an unlimited source of inspiration for well presentation of the room amenities. Hotel managers understand the heavy load of papers needed to produce boxboards and the limitations they cause for the staff and the guest.

It’s a two-ways road. Just have some taste and you will start finding new ways of representing room amenities. Try to use as less as possible of the boxboards.

• No More Plastics and Nylons

In developed countries the usage of nylons in daily life and work is getting more and more restricted. The problem still remains painful in less developed countries. A very simple calculation based on an average hotel with 200 rooms proves how much nylon is consumed in different areas and departments of the hotel.

Many solutions are ready on hand to change the mode of nylon usage in the hotels. One good example is changing all trash bins with steel – made ones. They do not need any more nylon. The maids can simply empty them and wash out.

• Solar  Energy Systems

Solar Energy Systems has been recently mast produced, financed, designed and operated in hotels. The earth is getting short on oil, gas and other consumable energies and renewable energies are getting substituted. They are clean sources of energy that are the global trend and most governments offer good subsidies for hotels and other companies to start welcoming them.

The above items are reviewed just as an introduction to green policies and global agreements. Based on geographical and cultural effects, hotels may take different strategies to be a part of Green and Eco- Friendly Hotels. The road is wide open and we just need to start on.

• نویسنده : یزد فردا
• منبع خبر : خبرگزاری فردا