SPOTLIGHTING SMART SUSTAINABILITY
In our second 'Sustainability Spotlight' we caught up with the inspiring team at Red Carnation Hotels. Part of The Travel Corporation, Red Carnation Hotels comprises 18 luxurious properties in prime locations worldwide.
Hot off the heels from winning the 'Sustainable Business Award' at The Cateys this year, we had the pleasure of speaking to Michelle Devlin (General Manager at The Egerton House Hotel and Global Sustainability Officer) and Scott Clinton (Global Sustainability Project Manager) to learn more about their award-winning approach.
HOW HAS RED CARNATION HOTELS APPROACHED BECOMING A MORE SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS?
Michelle: Well, sustainability has always been important to Red Carnation Hotels. When I joined 18 years ago, sustainability was a huge passion of mine. But back then, sustainability within the hospitality industry was very much turning the lights off, water saving etc. A lot of the basics.
So I started by trying a few new initiatives in my own hotel and then slowly, but surely, my passion was embraced over the years and it all started to just grow and grow. Clusters of people across the collection became interested in sustainability and wanted to get involved. Then sustainability became a part of our annual conference, and we'd agree a theme of what we would be looking to do over the course of the year.
Things ramped up further in around 2018 when I started our campaign for single use plastics; highlighting their use within our operations and the need to look for alternatives. By this point we were doing a lot of good work across the collection, but we weren't always communicating it to our guests. So we setup another campaign to share our progress and the reasons behind our approach.
Then, of course, the pandemic hit and a lot of businesses put sustainability on hold. However, we were really fortunate that our ownership was keen to maintain momentum and continue all our work on becoming a more sustainable business. We actually put it at the forefront of the business and started to think about it in the context of our reopening plans.
Together with The TreadRight Foundation, we launched a 5 year strategy, with 11 very clear goals aligned with 11 SDG's (Sustainable Development Goals) in September 2020.
That's when Scott was appointed to help us really start to think about how we could make the most of this incredible new structure and strategy, rolling it out over our 18 properties.
