3 Online Courses To Turn Your Hotel Green

In 2017, I set out on a mission to help Green the Hospitality Industry, there has been many up and downs since then, but one thing remains - my belief that this is the best way to go for the industry.

We keep hearing in the news about Climate Change, how many years we have left, what will happen in 2050 if we don’t change…Some people believe it, some people don’t.

Regardless of your personal opinion on Climate Change, the reality is that every person, and every Hotel in the world, can do something to reduce their Carbon Footprint.

Sustainability In Hospitality

Hotels waste thousands of Euros every year, by having poor processes and behaviours around energy, water and waste. This has, not only a negative effect in the environment, but also to the business bottom line. We spend time, money and resources on promoting our business, bettering our customer service, providing unique visitor experiences… And then we throw a lot of our hard earned sales literally in the bin or down the drain, by not managing our Waste and Water.

Hotels needs to change behaviour urgently - for financial reasons, marketing reasons (customer demand) but also for environmental reasons. Creating a sustainable hotel that follows eco-friendly processes is now a vital factor for success.

When I first became challenged with the concept of Green Hospitality back in 2012, I had no clue what it meant to run a Green Hotel. Worst even, I had been appointed as the Green Manager of Hotel Doolin in County Clare, and I did not know how to even start, neither did a have a large budget that would allow me to look into capital projects like installing solar panels or retrofitting our building.

I attended green business workshops, eco friendly seminars, sustainable tourism conferences, read blogs on reducing your carbon footprint and water conservation, but the path to success was still unclear to me. Joining the Green Hospitality Ireland certification programme, in the hands of Maurice Bergin, was the real start of our Green Journey.

I learnt that to reduce a business Carbon Footprint, you need to start with the 3 basic pillars of an environmental management system, energy, waste & water.

I realised that for the past decade as a hotel manager, I had never cared about our utility bills, they arrived, we paid them, moving on.

With the guidance of Maurice Bergin, I started taking a keen interest in our utility bills. I started analysing them every month, benchmarking against our previous month’s consumption, until I could see our pattern, our baseline, what our real consumption of energy & water really was, and how much waste we were producing for every customer that came into our Hotel.

Having that type of knowledge, allowed me to identify areas for improvement across all of our department’s. We were implementing new procedures, we involved our team, we trained them, we asked for their own ideas, and we changed the way we operated in a daily basis.

Within 2 years of the start of our Green Programme, we not only achieved Platinum Award on Green Hospitality Ireland, we had actually managed to reduce our Energy consumption by 30%, our Waste by 40% and our water by 25%.

These major savings were achieved with no capital investment at all, we simply took control of our utilities, and we ensured our daily activities and operation of our building followed our new standards of eco friendly procedure.

Looking back, I realised that our Green journey was easier than I originally thought, it changed the way our Hotel was viewed by our customers and our local community, and we saved a tonne of money in the process!

This was my light bulb moment. Could I possibly teach other Hotel Managers achieve the same results? With the super bonus of been involved in a new revolutionary way to Green the industry that I love?

Fifty Shades Greener Online Hotel Management Training

I set up Fifty Shades Greener in 2017, working one to one with Hotel owners and managers, but I soon realised, that if I wanted to make a larger impact, I needed to make my training approach available to everyone in the world.

Finally, this year, I have achieved one of my milestones, by creating, easy to follow, action based Online Training programmes, that will teach any Hotel manager the first steps towards setting their own environmental management systems. 

I now teach managers, all over the world, to learn about their bills, to set up their baselines, to benchmark their utilities monthly, and most importantly to start setting operational procedures that will allow them to reduce their use of energy & water and their creation of waste.

Another reason I decided to put my business online, is because the Hospitality industry is a fast paced industry. Taking time out of the business to attend training, is like asking a manager to give you half his wages. With online training, you can gain the knowledge you need, from the comfort of your own office at home, anytime, from any part of the world and from any device.

Full disclosure though, Greening your Hotel, is entirely down to you. I can teach you all the tips and actions I have learned and implemented over the past few years, but unless you follow the Online Training instructions, and implement those actions at your business, then no Green Programme will ever be successful.

Becoming a Green Business Trainer

Now in 2020, I am launching the Fifty Shades Greener Licensed Trainers Programme, so that more people around the world can learn what I've learned in the past 8 years, and become Green Business Trainers themselves, working under the Fifty Shades Greener Brand.

We are licensing just 10 individuals or training organisations worldwide to join us on this venture. The induction programme commences on 1st July 2020. If you want to find out more head over to the Licensed Trainers Page

Until Next Week

Raquel