We are all aware of the continuing impact of COVID-19 and the challenges this has posed for the hospitality industry. With an abundance of new rules and regulations being put in place, many hotels have had to review and implement new procedures. As businesses have been purchasing new equipment and PPE, there has been concern around an inevitable increase in more plastic and single-use items.
Our Considerate members at Georgian House have kept their sustainability goals in mind while making any necessary procedural changes cost-effective, practical, and easy for their team to implement.
Here they shared with us a few small practical ways that they are ensuring the safety of their guests and team whilst still operating in line with their sustainability ethos.
- “Purchasing – We are still focused on working with local suppliers where possible to reduce food miles and support our communities, while still providing great products for our guests. We have also opted for glass or paper packaged options as it was important to us to limit additional waste and single-use plastic.”
- “PPE – After considering PPE in detail we decided the best option for our team members was to purchase a reusable face shield for each team member. After each use, our team disinfects their shield and keeps it safely on site. It also allows for better interaction between team members and guests.”
- “Contactless – We are looking to implement a fully contactless check-in experience in the future and have recently created a digital guest directory for our guests. This allows guests to have all of the relevant information, menus, and links to ordering services ahead of their arrival reducing contact via paper or folders in the rooms. We are also working on a new Georgian House app that will allow further contactless interactions between our guests and the team.”
- “Housekeeping – To ensure the safety of our guests and team we have made the decision to remove our daily remake service for those guests who are staying with us for 1-3 nights. We are looking to work with a sustainability charity and provide a donation for each guest who opts out of this service in the future.”
In addition to the above Georgian House are continuing with the following:
“Single-use plastics – We have adopted many steps to reduce the use of single-use plastics at Georgian House including; Removing all single-use packaging for guest toiletries in the rooms. Not using single-use plastics for takeaway breakfast options (where reasonably possible). No plastic water bottles in guest rooms – instead we have a glass carafe in each room”
“Food Waste – We are delighted to be working with TooGoodToGo – the app that is designed to ‘Save delicious food and tackle food waste.’ Since working with them we resold over 130 meals in the first three months that would have otherwise been wasted. During Covid-19 restrictions, we were able to make food donations to a local food bank charity to ensure food was not spoiled.”
“Energy – We ensure that we have Energy saving light bulbs in use throughout our property. As a grade two listed building being energy efficient does present us with challenges, but we are currently taking small steps to ensure that electricity usage throughout the hotel is monitored (including using Considerate’s fluttr app) and have begun implementing light sensors in some of the communal and back of house areas of the hotel.”
We look forward to seeing how the sustainability plans at Georgian House progress!
