Business Proposal for Hotel Sustainability Plan

Magic Hotels & Resorts 2734 Seaside Drive Tampa, Florida 04253 To: Daniel D. McLean, Chief Operating Officer From: Vanessa Bek, Chief Engineer Subject: Date: 03/07/14 In response to your request, I have gathered some sustainability news, options and suggestions  for  our  hotel.  Many  hotels  have  started  to  go  “green” internationally; and this whole idea of going green has begun to strike in interest amongst consumers and they are starting to grow an interest in the idea of sustainability. I think that this approach will help both  our  hotel’s  image  and  financial  aspects.  After  much  research,  I  have  realized  that  there  is   a broad range of where a hotel can start to become green. However, since we are just starting to switch over and focus on sustainability, I have decided to list just the general ideas that will help us to get started while showing the highest return on investment and greatest sustainability impact. To start off, the most basic approach to sustainability would be to reduce the amount of wastes. Whether that waste is energy, water, or actual products. Energy conservation can help us save money, and we can focus on the hotel light systems by switching to automatic lighting systems or to energy-efficient light bulbs. Lighting can play a huge role in the guest experience, so the type of lighting should be further discussed with the Board of Directors during the board meeting. Water  conservation  is  another  aspect  that  can  help  trim  our  hotel’s   utility  bills.  We  can  better  promote  the  idea  of  guests’ reusing their towels and linens during their stay, instead of receiving new ones daily. This can help reduce the amount of water use going in for laundry, and we can replace the faucets and showerheads for low-flow ones. To reduce product waste, we should implement a system to re-use  some  of  the  hotel’s  bath   amenities, but these waste reduction methods can be slowly discussed once we make the major switch within our hotel through energy and waster reduction. The international hotel company, Hilton Worldwide, purchased 450 million kilowatt hours of green power. This amount is supposedly the equivalent of avoiding an estimated 80 million tons of carbon dioxide. Hilton also invested in more efficient appliances and operating equipment, and focused on their lighting fixtures and bulbs in order to reduce their energy usage and costs.1 In order to conserve water, they installed water restrictors and displacement devices.2 Las Vegas-based hotel, MGM Grand, is another property that is well known for its sustainability practices in the hotel. There, they have indeed managed to replace their compact fluorescent light bulbs with incandescent light bulbs in the guestrooms, install lighting motion sensors in the office areas, and optimize their HVAC chillers and pumps.3 InterContinental Hotels Group has even started their IHG Green Engage program to promote

1 http://cr.hiltonworldwide.com/sustainably/sustainability_energy.html 2 http://cr.hiltonworldwide.com/sustainably/sustainability_water.html 3 https://www.mgmgrand.com/sustainability/

sustainability in their properties. IHG suggests keeping man-made changes to the natural water cycle to a minimum and improve lighting designs to save.4 The top two sustainability approaches that I would recommend for our hotel to switch our lighting systems to promote energy conservation, and to practice saving water wastes within the property. First, regarding energy conservation within the hotel, I suggest switching any of our fluorescent lights with energy-efficient LED light bulbs to reduce energy costs. Dimming the lights in unused hallways throughout the property and even adding automatic lighting systems in some areas can help our hotel to conserve energy. Taking the example of MGM Grand and installing lighting motion sensors for places like the office is a great idea. I also suggest  switching  to  key  card  systems  in  each  of  the  hotel  rooms  for  activating  the  room’s   lights and air conditioning system. This is a system that can help save our energy costs for each room, because energy in that room can only be used when the guest is actually present. The availability of the guest will be confirmed by inserting their hotel room key into the system to activate the energy usage. “According  to  Sylvie  Laitre  of  Mexico  Boutique  Hotels,   there’s  an  obvious  reason  besides  environmentalism  to  switch  the  key  card  system:  electric   bills  are  cut  by  as  much  as  40%  in  hotels  where  key  cards  are  used.”  (Schwietert,  2009)5 According to this statement, it seems like this energy-saving method was indeed efficient and effective for this hotel, so I am hoping that it will be the same for ours. This can be a great long-term investment for us because we will continue to see savings build up throughout the years. Secondly, regarding the water conservation practices, I suggest that we should change all faucets and showerheads throughout the hotel property. Switching them to low-flow faucets will help reduce the amount of water waste during each use. Although we cannot stop people from wasting water, we can implement changes of our own to help cut down the amount of waste. As well as changing the faucets to low-flow ones, we should think about changing the standard sinks to sinks with automatic hand-motion sensors. Also, a gray-water recycling program can also be effective for our sustainability measures. With the water consumed from each room, we can recycle that and recuperate it for cleaning. These methods can be very advantageous for us and help us to stop unnecessary water waste. Hopefully, some if not all of these ideas will appeal to the Board of Directors for the new change in our hotel. These changes may seem like a lot of energy and hours will go in, but it will turn out to be a great investment with the savings that will provide for us. Energy and water usage can add up to hefty bills, but we can avoid all this and extra labor in the future by turning to more sustainable methods in our hotel. Making several changes within the hotel property regarding light fixtures and water faucets can make big changes for us in the long- term is a hotel company. Sincerely, Vanessa Bek

4 http://www.ihgplc.com/index.asp?pageid=742 5 http://matadornetwork.com/change/10-steps-hotels-can-take-to-go-greener/