16 ROTTERDAM HOTELS CREATE A PROMISE OF SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH NEW ‘HOTEL NEUTRAAL’ INITIATIVE
Under the title ‘Hotel Neutraal’, 16 hotels in Rotterdam have are collectively taking steps towards a more sustainable future.
Each hotel in the collective is taking steps to ensure they reduce energy and water usage, create less waste, use more circular products, create lower CO2 emissions to help save money and deliver an eco-friendly solution to their guests, in the hope of building a ‘greener’ Rotterdam.
Hotel Neutraal was developed by Green Leisure Group in collaboration with three Rotterdam project partners: BlueCity, Rotterdam Partners and the Municipality of Rotterdam. The sixteen Rotterdam hotels that have joined are Hostel Room, Stayokay, The James, Supernova Hotel, Hotel New York, NH Atlanta, Nhow, H2otel, Room Mate Bruno, Bilderberg Parkhotel, The Bellhop, Hotel van Walsum, The Student Hotel, The Slaak, Marriott Hotel and Postillion Hotel WTC. Together, these hotels are taking the first major steps towards the ‘Hotel Neutral in 2050’ target.
VANG Buitenshuis – a programme helping the services sector halve its amount of residual waste generated – is supporting the Hotel Neutraal project financially. VANG stands in Dutch for ‘from waste to raw materials’. The aim is to recycle more, use fewer raw materials and take a step towards a circular economy.
Kick-off Hotel Neutral by municipal authority
The project kicked off on October 19, 2022 at Postillion WTC Hotel Rotterdam. In the presence of Robert Simons, Rotterdam alderman responsible for the Port, Economy, Hospitality and Governance portfolio, the hoteliers and project partners got acquainted and shared experiences and circular opportunities.
During the launch event, Mark Slegers of the Rotterzwam Company, demonstrated how the hotels could work in a more circular way. For example, by collecting and processing old coffee grounds for use in products on their menu. Lola Slager from Orbisk, a company helping professional kitchens to get a grip on their food waste, presented opportunities for hoteliers to reduce food waste and thus save money immediately.
Direct and tailor-made insights and practical tools
The Rotterdam hotels have had to deal with a lot in the recent past: various lockdowns due to Covid-19, strong price increases, staff shortages and on top of that the sustainability challenge.
Hotel Neutraal aims to provide hotels in Rotterdam with tailor-made insights into sustainable opportunities and practical tools to get started immediately and also to initiate collective circular and sustainable business cases that lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions and lower use of raw materials.
Monique Segeren the owner of Hostel Room – one of the hotels participating in the initiative, said of her involvement in the project: “We see that sustainability is becoming an increasingly important theme for our guests and employees. Rising energy costs and increasingly strict environmental legislation also mean that we must continue to take steps towards sustainability. Through this process, we hope to gain more insight into the sustainable quick wins and to learn from the other participating hotels.”
Eveline van der Pluijm, manager Convention Bureau & Tourism Board of “Rotterdam Partners” sees the Hotel Neutraal project as an ideal opportunity to profile the city of Rotterdam to the outside world.
“Sustainability is an important criterion for more and more conference organisations in selecting a city for their conference,” she said. “The fact that hotels in Rotterdam are becoming more sustainable through the Hotel Neutraal initiative will help the city attract important international conferences.”
Following visits to all of the participating hotels in October and November last year, Green Leisure Group created a plan for each participating hotel will then be made. The hotels will subsequently be supported and guided in implementing the sustainable measures. Results will be shared in the final meeting in May 2023.
You can follow the progress of each hotel and the overall initiative via the BlueCity / Hotel Neutraal website and on the LinkedIn feeds of all project partners.
