Green Hospitality
BETHESDA, Md. — Marriott International’s 30-year-old headquarters building was awarded LEED Gold certification for existing building. The company recently announced a companywide commitment to expand its green building portfolio to approximately 300 LEED-certified properties by 2015.
Hotels and hotel chains across the country are renovating and building new to adhere to LEED qualifications. Besides some 40 Marriott International properties that have earned or are expecting LEED – including the Ritz-Carlton in Charlotte and the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Baltimore (both LEED Gold) – San Francisco’s W Hotel was recently awarded LEED, as were Hilton’s Hampton Inn and Suites in Sarasota, Fla., and the Hilton Garden Inn in Gatlinburg, Tenn.
Much of Marriott’s future green hotel expansion will be fueled by a new Courtyard hotel program, which has filed for pre-certified LEED. The new building prototype is expected to save franchises $100,000 and approximately six months of design time, while providing up to 25 percent in energy and water savings.
Company officials expect the Marriott International headquarters to save $700,000 annually in energy costs and receive up to $1.3 million in tax credits over the next three years. Key changes included boosting the building’s recycling rate to 69 percent in 2009, diverting all the headquarters’ waste from a landfill to a waste-to-energy plant and installing high efficiency lighting.
Motion sensor lighting was installed in restrooms, telephones and electrical closets, staff began purchasing highly recycled office supplies, and Marriott officials entered the headquarters into Demand Response energy reduction programs, earning more than $100,000 back in electricity rebates.
"We were able to reduce energy, water, and waste by collaborating with our 3,000 headquarters employees and like-minded strategic partners, such as Philips, Kohler and Waste Management," says Jim Young, senior director of corporate facilities for Marriott International and a member of Marriott’s Green Council, a cross-functional team responsible for creating and implementing the company’s environmental strategy.
Marriott has approximately 275 EPA Energy Star-labeled hotels in addition to its green portfolio. The company boasted the first LEED-certified hotel in the U.S. – the Inn & Conference Center at the University of Maryland, which was completed in 2005. The hotel is 37 percent more efficient than comparable buildings, according to Marriott, and 65 percent of construction materials were recycled in the building process.
The LEED Gold-certified Ritz-Carlton in uptown Charlotte is a more recent addition to Marriott’s green building portfolio. The hotel has a green roof, which is home to 18,000 sedum plants, a chef’s garden and two beehives, where up to 60,000 honeybees live during the summer. When mature, the hives and garden will produce food for use in the hotel’s kitchen.
Hilton Worldwide has also made a global commitment to green operations. The company plans to reduce energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and waste output by 20 percent at its hotels and corporate properties by 2014. The recently LEED-certified Hilton Garden Inn Gatlinburg in Tennessee reportedly saves $12,000 annually due to a green laundry system.
In April, Starwood’s W San Francisco hotel received LEED Silver for Existing Buildings status, becoming only the seventh existing U.S. hotel to achieve the certification, according to the USGBC. The hotel includes a green meetings program and a green bar program.
One of the world’s largest hotel chains, Wyndham Worldwide, launched its Wyndham Green initiative to focus on reducing energy and water use at its hotels while encouraging recycling, eco-friendly purchasing, Energy Star energy tracking, and green education.
Earlier this year, Wyndham Worldwide announced that its 250,000-square-foot headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., had achieved LEED Silver certification for purchasing 100 percent of its electricity from wind-generated methods and for reducing water and energy use and waste by 10 percent to 30 percent.
Some of Wyndham’s other green efforts include implementing an EarthSmart linen reuse program at its nearly 7,000 properties and launching an eco-friendly uniform line made of polyester fiber from recycled plastic bottles for its hotel staffs to wear.