Green your Hospitality Business with Online Training

So the very first think to say is apologies for the egotistical blog! This one is about me and the Online training courses I have created to help Green Hospitality Businesses. 

My Story

My name is Raquel. I'm originally from Spain but I have lived in Ireland for the last 20 years working in the Hospitality Industry. And yes, I completely understand how hard it is to take on new projects, or new challenges, while still being busy serving the visitor that is in front of you.

I have been working with Hospitality businesses for over 3 years now as a consultant, and it never fails, the starting point of every business owner I have met is the perception that Greening their business is going to cost them a fortune, and as you can imagine, that brings apprehension and a reluctance to change.

I Started my own Green Journey at Hotel Doolin, I was working there as the Sales & Marketing manager and my General manager at the time called me to tell me he wanted to run a Green Hotel and that I was to become their new Green Manager and achieve Green certification. At the start I was not excited, in fact I was even a little resentful! I had no idea where to start, and obtaining certification is quite hard as you need to comply with a rigorous set of rules but at the time there was little information for me to find out how to get there. So I spent the first year googling things, finding little tricks and tips on the areas or energy, water and waste minimization. We started taking control of our building, the energy and water you use and the waste we produced. It is funny, I studied Hotel Management for 5 years at the start of my courier, they teach you how to budget and forecast, how to control your staff wages, etc, but nobody tells you that when you finally become a hotel or restaurant manager you will also have to manage a building. And the Energy, water and waste of a building can amount to be the second biggest cost to your business, yet, nobody tells you this in college.

After 2 years implementing the small actions I self thought myself, we had reduced our Energy by 30% , waste by 25% and water by 40%. Imagine what that did to our Utility bills! We had saved a lot of money, and then I was allowed used that money to invest in bigger projects that required investment. But in reality, we had saved that money before we re-invested it, so this meant our Green actions had not required any capital investment at all from the owners. Over the next few years we became the greenest Hotel in Ireland and right now, Hotel Doolin is getting ready to announce that they are going to be completely Carbon Neutral this year which is unbelievable! Their environmental mind goes into everything they do, even their festivals, I worked with them for the past two years Greening their Doolin Folk Festival which actually takes please very soon in the weekend of June 14^th. They have water stations to refill bottles instead of selling plastic water, they segregate their waste, they use a glass refund policy rather than plastic glasses and loads more.

My Green Journey

My green journey was so satisfying and empowering that 3 years ago I decided to leave my beloved Hotel Doolin and set up my own consultancy company to Green Hotels and Restaurants around the country.

After spending the last 3 years working with private business owners, I was doing quite well, but travelling from place to place there is only so many people you can get to so a few months ago thanks to Tina O’Dwyer from The Tourism Space I decided to put all my knowledge on to Online training programmes. They are action based and easy to follow, and each video will simply show you an action your business can take to reduce the use or learn to control the use of Energy, water and production of waste. By applying this actions I can guarantee a business will see a reduction of their Carbon footprint, and also their bills, so to me, it is not just the nice thing to do it’s the smart thing to do as a business owner.

The courses I have available right now are Save Water and Save Money, Waste Reduction course and Plastics and Packaging Mini course. They are if you like my Greener for beginners. They include all the little tips I learnt along the way. I am not going to lie, a hotel or restaurant owner could find all the same information online, if they have the time to research it like I did back 7 years ago. But if they want to take the easy route and take one of my courses, they will achieve great results within 10 to 12 weeks, assuming the implement the actions I am teaching them.

I've packaged them into neatly bundles with workbooks, and charts that you can downloaded and used, so you can review your actually usage of Energy, Water and Waste production month by month. I have put them all together into simple Online Training programmes.

Now, this programmes are action based. So I will teach you an action. The videos are very short 5 to 10 minutes max. You watch the video, you learn the action and then you go and apply it in your business. So the work is up to you. I can only let you know what it is I did, the tricks I used, to Green many Hotels and Restaurants. But the rest of the work then we'll be down to you!!

I'm not going to lie! all of the actions I'm going to describe to you in this training courses are readily available out there online, and possibly for free!! 

You just have to find the time to Google them, find them, and apply them to your own business.

That's what I did when I Green my first hotel seven years ago.

But my mission with this is to Green as many Hospitality Businesses as possible. So I wanted to make it as easy as possible for owner and managers out there, and that's why I decided to put this training programmes in place.

Now, if you want to spend the time searching for the actions yourself online, kudos to you! The main thing is that you are trying to Green your business.

But if you want to take the easy route and just apply the actions I'm suggesting, I can guarantee you they all work, and I know because I have implemented them myself in many hotels and restaurants in the last seven years.

Online Courses

So right now, we have three courses available:

1. Water Conservation Course. Is made out of 8 steps, 8 actions that you can implement in your business that will teach you how much water you are using, how much water your business needs, how much better you can do, implement actions to reduce your water, detect if you have a leak and measuring and monitoring so that you can compare your results month by month.

2. Waste Reduction course. The full course is made out of three modules:

1. Food waste

2. Landfill waste, the fundamentals

3. Plastics and Packaging.

Now, this is a larger course that is 18 steps, it also includes downloadable charts and workbooks.

But if you just want to dip your toe maybe on a waste prevention course,

you can try the:

3. Plastics & Packaging Mini Course, it's a very simple course made out of 5 actions that any owner or manager can take to reduce Plastics & Packaging at their business.

Pros of Online Training

Once you purchase any of the courses, you will have access to them forever. You will also have access to an Online Community with our Facebook group called “50 Shades Greener” that you can join at any stage. There will be other people, that are in the same journey as you, trying to reduce their water, their waste and their energy at the moment at their business.

It's always really good to link with like-minded people.

You also have access to me as your trainer. I'm not just on the training videos, you can contact me anytime by phone, by email or in any of my social media Platforms.

In fact, the courses also have a comment section that you can fill in, if something hasn't made sense, or if you can't apply an action to your business, or if you just need some further explanation on anything that I've thought you.

So that's it guys. I'm here to help. I want to make sure that as many businesses as possible apply green actions in the Hospitality Industry, because I'm a firm believer that if small actions are taken by many people, we can really reduce the carbon footprint of the entire Industry.

I hope to see you in one of the courses!!

Click Here to view Courses Available