After I received my LEED Green Associate accreditation last week, I decided to browse online to see if there were any interesting LEED-certified projects related to hospitality. I came across a great interview video between SAS, a company known for their statistical software, and Dennis Quaintance, president of Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants & Hotels. His company is recognized as an industry leader in green hotels, and its flagship property–The Proximity–is LEED Platinum Certified. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at the 2010 Sustainability Roundtable two years ago. Check out the video below (skip ahead to 1:46 for the important soundbite).
School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University
2011 Sustainability Roundtable at the Hotel School
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 3rd annual Sustainability Roundtable at Cornell University. The roundtable was attended by several notable industry executives from Marriott, InterContinental, Starwood, and Wyndham. It covered five topics: sustainability across global platforms, standardizing environmental footprints of hotel stays, customer choices, sustainability in the meetings/events sector, and leveraging trends and overcoming barriers in sustainability. Participants came from a wide variety of backgrounds; hospitality franchisors, owners, operators, suppliers, consultants, utility providers, investors, and researchers were all represented. In short, it was a meeting of the best, most passionate minds in sustainable hospitality. Although their discussion covered a wide range of important issues, the session that I found most interesting was “Sustainability and Customer Choices,” which I’ll briefly touch on.
Roger Simons, Manager from Meeting Professionals International (MPI); AJ Singh, Associate Professor of Michigan State University; and Ted Saunders, Director of Sustainability for Saunders Hotel Group partake in a lively discussion at the roundtable that the Center for Hospitality Research hosted.
It’s A Tough Job…
One of the many hats I wear within my La Paz Group responsibilities is orienting our new interns and visiting colleagues to the Kerala experience.
The usual itinerary includes a visit to some of the cultural sights at Fort Kochi, as well as Backwater excursions and of course, Thekkady and the Periyar Tiger Reserve.
I think I can say without reservation that each intern who enters the reserve has expressed the clear desire to encounter one of India’s most charismatic fauna–the elephant– and some have been luckier than others.
An important part of Indian mythology and culture, here in Kerala elephants were once called “sons of the Sahya”, meaning “sons of the Western Ghats”–referring to the mountain range that not only forms the border with a neighboring state but represents the heart of this one. Continue reading
Organikos 