Going Green

Hi and welcome back to the Heritage and CityLife Hotels blog!

Regular visitors to the site will probably have noticed the environmental focus for many of our hotels this year. If you haven’t heard of Green Globe yet I’m sure you’ll soon be very familiar with it. In essence this is an organisation that recognises those companies in the travel and tourism industry that meet high standards in the use of resources, energy consumption and reduction of waste. In other words, doing their bit for the planet.

We’ve been associated with Green Globe since 2002 when Heritage Auckland achieved benchmarked status. We’ve followed this up with the double Tourism Industry Award-winning Heritage Queenstown, Heritage Christchurch and Heritage Hanmer Springs this year, with more to come. We’ve proud to say that we’ve already reached our goal of having half of our hotels benchmarked by the end of the year.

But what does this mean to you? With more media space than housing crises or Presidential slip-ups, climate change is a hot topic this year. The threats to the environment have been well-publicised, but how concerned are you that the hotel you choose to stay in also believe they should make a difference? Would having the option of staying in an environmentally-friendly hotel appeal to you more than one that isn’t? What other initiatives would you like to see us introduce?

We’d really like to know what you think. Would you choose to ‘go green’ for your accommodation or is it not important to you? Feel free to add your thoughts using the feedback boxes below and we look forward to hearing from you.

Barring a case of what I think is known in the Web2.0 world as “writer’s blog”, look out for another blog in a couple of weeks.

Until next time, thanks for reading and choosing to stay at Heritage and CityLife Hotels.

Michael Hartland
Marketing Executive
14 May 2007

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Your comments

on 10 May 2009, Johno Tunnell wrote :

Hi I have seen recycling bins in the rooms of hotels before. I was looking for a recycling bin for domestic and found a NZ supplier of some great recycling products. www.recyclingbins.co.nz

on 2 Nov 2008, J Smith wrote :

We have stayed at Heritage Auckland twice recently and found no provision had been made for guests to recycle in their rooms. We saw no evidence that recyclables were being separated from guests rubbish for recycling at the hotel. We would like to see a separate rubbish bin for recyclables in every room with a list on the side, of all items and recycle numbers that can be placed in it.

on 31 May 2007, Jan West wrote :

What initiatives does your organisation support to keep up New Zealands clean and green image.

Hi Jan and thanks for your query. The main environmental initiative we support is Green Globe, as discussed above. Basically this imposes certain standards of energy consumption and waste reduction that when reached grants the hotel Benchmarked status. We're hoping to have more of our hotels benchmarked by the end of the year, with CityLife Auckland and Heritage Hotel & Spa du Vin strong contenders at this stage.

Heritage Rotorua are members of the regional sustainability charter operated by the regional council.

Other than this, it's an internal policy that environmental issues must be discussed at each management meeting, with the expectation that this will filter down to the operations of each individual hotel.

If you'd like more detail on Green Globe or anything else like this just let me know.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment.

Michael Hartland