Hotels going green for groups

As with many businesses, hotels can provide a variety of amenities on top of its primary function of offering a home away from home for weary travelers. These days most large hotels provide restaurants, swimming pools, fitness centers, and sometimes even casinos and shopping malls. One of the most popular of these amenities, at least for business travelers, is the conference room or meeting space, and all over the country these centers are getting the green treatment.

In a recent article Diana Driscoll, one of our past guest bloggers, outlines the growing popularity of “Green Meetings” and how hotels are working to win over event planners with an eye for sustainability. For example, hotels and convention centers have begun to provide new event provisions including reusable glassware, paperless communications, shuttle services or mass transit options for event guests, and energy and water conservation programs.

The effects of these sustainable efforts have the potential to make huge waves. According to the EPA, a whopping 93,000 federal employees travel daily to 8,000 different places throughout the US, taking up approximately 24 million room nights every year. Combine these with business travelers and, if all choose to convene at green meeting centers, the potential for environmental savings is enormous.

While still in its early stages, the green meeting trend is growing quickly, and many industry professionals have begun working with the EPA to set green meeting standards. Hopefully these standards will give hotels a new sustainable goal to strive for and event goers a way to feel secure in their green choices.