A greener future

Challenging but supportive: at TUI Travel we need to be both if we are to make a significant difference to the environmental footprint of our suppliers.

Our goal is to have all our suppliers continuously improving their sustainability performance. That is a big challenge – for us and our suppliers – and we recognise we need to help them on that journey. It is why we launched the TUI Travel ‘Guidelines for Environmental Sustainability in Hotels’ in November 2010.

Focusing on hotels as the largest type of business in our supply chain, the guidelines aim to help our hotel suppliers achieve best practice sustainability performance. Designed to help hotels around the world to reduce their environmental footprint, the guidelines cover everything from design considerations and tips for construction, right through to everyday advice for hotel departments such as housekeeping, maintenance and food & beverage.

Jane Ashton, Director of Group Sustainable Development, says:

“These guidelines demonstrate our absolute commitment to lightening the environmental footprint of our supply chain. They’ll also help hotels improve their bottom line, while satisfying growing customer demand for greener holidays.”

The guidelines contain more than 50 Flagship Standards. These are the actions we believe all hotels should be taking if they’re serious about sustainability. One of our flagship hotel properties is the Blue Village Atlantica Aegean Park in Rhodes. Through modern build techniques and architectural design, energy consumption is kept as low as 7.5 kWh per guest night – less than half that of an ‘average’ hotel. Roofs, walls and windows all have double layers of insulation and the air-conditioning system is cooled by cold water from the bedrock.

Green is Gold

Also included in the guidelines are ‘Green is Gold’ features, where hotels can find out just how much money they can save by incorporating these measures into their operations. For example, our Thomson Sensatori Resort in Crete recently reported savings in excess of €100,000 a year, achieved through energy and water efficiency measures.

Constantinos Victoras, Hotel Manager at Sensatori Resort Crete, commented:

“We’ve worked closely with TUI UK on our sustainability performance since we opened in 2008. We’re proud to have reduced our environmental footprint – it’s not only the right thing to do, but the impact it’s made to our bottom line means that sustainability will remain central to how we manage our operations.”

Patricio Gonzalez Morel is an environmental engineer with 15 years’ experience conducting environmental diagnostic audits at hotels worldwide and co-author of the guidelines. He says:

“My experience in conducting environmental diagnostic audits at more than 150 hotels worldwide, including more than a dozen TUI Travel flagship hotels, shows that it is generally possible to reduce energy and water consumption by 10-20%.”

Embedding best practice

The guidelines were launched at a conference in London which brought together around 50 hotel general managers, industry associations, academics and key colleagues from across TUI Travel to share best practice. This was just one of several sustainability supplier conferences which have also taken place around the Group, for example TUI Central Europe organised conferences in Turkey and the Canary Islands.

We are not relying solely on the guidelines. As TUI UK & Ireland Sustainable Product Manager Sean Owens says:

“There are a great many hotels where the penny has not dropped.”

Alongside the guidelines, over 85% of our tour operator accommodation suppliers now have minimum environmental and/or social standards written into their contracts with us. This will help raise the baseline standard of our hotels and then the guidelines will help them progress. It is this holistic approach – being both challenging and supportive – that we feel will help us meet our sustainable supplier goal.