Growing up, one of my favorite things to do was visit my grandparents for dinner. My grandmother always for cooked for an army, even when no visitors were expected. As she saw it, you never know when someone might stop by, since anyone and everyone was welcome to just pop in whenever they liked. Perhaps her graciousness helped set the seed for my eventual foray into hospitality.
Sustainability isn’t a fashion or trend. It’s not a fad, either. It’s good business, plain and simple—an imperative for hotel operations and development that costs little and generates high premiums and returns. Surprised? Don’t be. As the developers interviewed for this report revealed, upfront costs of LEED-targeted development have gone down significantly during the past decade, complementing the rising eco-consciousness in transient and group segments.
Vail Resorts, Inc. (NYSE:MTN) is known among outdoors enthusiasts as the operator of some of the finest mountain resort areas in the United States, including Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone in Colorado, and the Heavenly Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe on the California and Nevada border. But resort-goers should also be aware of Vail’s strong commitment to environmental sustainability.
The Customer Contact Call Center for Outrigger Enterprises Group has become truly green. Back in December 2004 I initiated a project to investigate all of the new and exciting hosted call center software applications that was available in the market. It took me approximately one and half years to analyze over a half a dozen companies. These companies were offering many different ways of being able to connect with our guests using VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, technology. They also had many different ways of tracking the total business environment including consumer telephone call, email, fax, Internet live chat, Internet call back routing and wholesale rooming list routing which would allow wholesale to become paperless.
Seattle, the so-called "Emerald City," is one of the greenest cities in the United States. Since launching a wide-ranging energy conservation initiative in 1977, the City of Seattle has established environmental responsibility as a fundamental element of its culture. This article looks at the growth of sustainable development in the city, including the recent opening of Seattle's first LEED-certified hotel, the Hyatt at Olive 8.
Xanterra Parks & Resorts is the largest national and state park concessioner in the United States. Their operations span the country from the wilderness of Ohio's state parks to the stark desert of Death Valley. The company’s legacy in the hospitality industry extends more than a century, back to when the Fred Harvey Company began providing quality hotels and restaurants for weary travelers making their way West. Since its inception, the company has held environmental sustainability as a core value, which runs from the boardroom, to each and every one of the guestrooms and dining rooms that they manage across the nation.