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This short article briefly discusses some of the ways in which hotels are taking more initiatives to be eco friendly and practice sustainability. This article also lists a number of statistics to support its claims. For example, according to the article, "150-room hotel can conserve 72,000 gallons of water and 480 gallons of laundry soap every year by placing the cards in its guest rooms". The cards that the article is referring to are the little "to save the planet" cards you may see when you check into a hotel in your bathroom, usually near your towels. In fact, the "green cards" are so important to hotels that some companies actually provide them for you so you don't have to make them yourself (for a small fee of course) such as the Green Hotels Association that the article discusses. One of my favorite parts of the article is the "10 Million Trees" initiative taken on by the Four Seasons. According to the article, "The hotel chain is celebrating its 50th anniversary by planting 10 million trees across the 34 countries in which it operates with the hope that the effort will help combat deforestation and global warming and attract more customers concerned about the state of the planet". This concept is truly amazing to me and it definitely should be an aid to help others in learning why "going green" is such a major deal and how seriously it effects not only our futures, but our everyday lives. The article wraps up talking about eco lodges in partnership with natives and why that is important when travelers are passing by.

Hotels are going beyond just encouraging guests to reuse linens and towels. The WTTC and Green Hotel Association are making an effort to implement green initiatives in the industry.

In this article by USA Today, David Grossman stresses the importance of recycling everything from plastic, to aluminum, even to grocery bags. In California, not only do they recycle the usual newspapers and bottles, but they also dispose of batteries, light bulbs and other hazardous materials that could do extra damage on the environment. Across the country hotels are taking basic measures to protect the environment by maximizing the recycling of towels, and bed linens, but in this article Grossman goes into great detail about the different hotels across the country that has taken extra measures to "go green". For example, The Kimpton Hotels based in San Francisco has equipped every room in in the 40 hotels nationwide with recycle bins and installed water-efficiency faucets, toilets, and efficient lighting. They also have implemented the use of non-toxic cleaners which not only benefits the environment, but also the employees because they are not constantly handling harsh chemicals and ammonia based cleaners. Like the Kimpton hotel, the orchard hotel in San Francisco has replaced these same dangerous cleaners with biodegradable cleansers made of fruit based essences. They have also added low emissions wallpaper and carpets, along with a key card control system that shuts off the electricity when guests leave. By hotels across the country doing their part, we can slowly eliminate the negative effects on the environment.

I agree with the different conservation methods because we have limited resources in the world, and we need to protect them.

I believe eco-friendly practices are necessary in today's world, especially in the hospitality industry, and the writer addresses very valid points. My question is this: is this practical for the industry as a whole? When do we come to the point that we need every hotel to be completely "green"? Over the years, being eco-friendly has become more prevalent across the board, but how do you encourage travelers to consistently be green? For that matter, how do the hotels with primarily transient stays (1-2 night stays) stay afloat in the battle to stay green? They are constantly using large amounts of resources required to clean and maintain their respective property, and constantly having new guests.

This article briefly introduced some new ideas about transportation tools for green technologies developing in the tourism industry. Although discovering and implementing a new thought of recycling for environmental friendly is very difficult and expensive, the green activities are significant and need to be continual going on.

In regards to Module 2: Post a hospitality/tourism network, telecommunications, or green related article, I chose to post about a green related article and found an awesome article of "Eight Ways Hotels Are Helping To Protect The Environment." In honor of the past April 22's Earth Day, the article displayed the examples for some of the hotels in the United States that were committed to aid in preserving the environment for the hoteliers and guests alike to keep sustainability strong for the respective hospitality companies as well as travelers who are striving to travel with eco-friendly options. Located in Oahu, Hawaii, the Turtle Bay Resort is home to an on-property horse stable, tennis and golf courses, a 15 mile hiking/mountain biking trails, many health conscious classes such as fitness, wellness, and even a surf school. With its advantageous beach location, water adventures such as eco-kayaking, snorkeling, and swimming enable guests to view many of the natural resources, mammals, and endangered species that visit along the shores of the resort. With all of the above activities, it is crucial for this resort to take especially good care of the natural resources that benefit the resort by attracting guests. With that being said, the resort team members initiate beach cleanups every month for about 5 miles of the beach's shoreline. As well, back in 2009, the resort developed a Green Committee to plan and map out methods to reduce the resort's carbon footprint. Some examples of this was adding solar roof panels, convert 70% of the resort's lighting to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs, initiated recycling for the entire resort, and changed cups utilized at the F&B outlets to environmental friendly options. Located in Leesburg, Virginia, The National Conference Center's food and beverage program partnered with local Virginia Farms to source their food from local farmers to enhance the consumer's yearning for the farm-to-table cuisine. For Earth Day, the company i

The importance of personalization for hotel guests is becoming increasingly popular in the travel industry and a simple step to improve direct conversions. You will learn about how to create a unique experience for hotel guests, mapping your target audience and crafting personalized campaigns for your target audience.

As per the article, I agree that personalization & the development of unique experiences will be driving factors within the industry moving forward. The hospitality industry has some catching up to do here as well.

The personalization or customization of the guest experience is extremely high in demand within the hospitality industry. It will be very interesting to see how hotels in particular are able to accommodate this new trend. It is important that the industry finds eco-friendly ways to address these needs. So hotels do not create additional, waste, since the product is 100% personalized for each guest.

This article briefly went over a few technology trends, sustainability practices and unique possibilities for future trends. While reading I was able to come to a conclusion on what types of experiences travelers like to have in 2020.

This article mainly describes the current main trends of artificial intelligence in revenue management, guest experience, and daily operations. AI's concierge service, chat robot translator, ultra-dynamic pricing, forecasting utility, team booking software review data collection, intelligent function charts, and intelligent recruitment are the main manifestations of future technological development. Through these artificial intelligence, the hotel can simplify some service procedures, provide more personalized and improve the guest's staying experience. But at the same time, we must also realize that intelligent technology cannot completely replace employees.

"AI is already changing the guest experience across the travel lifecycle, including the on-property experience."

Luxury hotel is a hotel group in British. It use a more environmentally friendly way to reduce their costs instead of raising bills. Several eco-attempts have been made.  Five years ago, Swinto Park installed a wood chip boiler and made the hotel carbon neutral from a heating perspective. It also use a highly efficient laundry system, which reduces the energy and water use by 30 percent.  The article also mentioned the US group of hotels called Green Hotels Association(GHA), an organization of hotel managers who dedicate in energy saving in hotels. 

This article is talking about current situation of how green concepts influences hospitality industry. Become more and more green and sustainable is the goal of many hotels, they've tried to achieve the goal through many ways in recent years. The hospitality industry is recognizing the compelling need to adopt sustainable operating practices for the sake of efficiency, cost savings and green building requirements. And also they are considering whether green can drive greater returns. Corporate travel executives set the rewards to encourage sustainable purchasing by reward. In fact, different people have different opinions of "green". Mostly, hostels chose to become more sustainable through strategic selection of products and services. Such as they use the conserving energy coverlets, shower, window, toilet and so on. Besides, hospitality managers want a consistent guidelines and performance targets to be used by purchase influencers and decision makers to make solutions for cost saving more effective. Now there are more and more people realize this concept and there already has a preliminary guideline for prioritizing actionable, practical solutions to achieve long-term growth of having a "green forest in hospitality".

According to Rob Hard, sustainability awareness has grown quite substantially. Now it is a must for for all employees in the industry, not only leaders, to extend their knowledge in sustainability practices. This article focuses on event planners and how understanding a hotel green initiatives can help make their selection of a hotel to be in the clients interest. Nowadays, hotels are slowly transitioning into becoming a green hotel for this reason. Some few initiatives that were talked about were the following: energy conservation, water conservation, bottled water alternatives, and recycling and waste reduction.

Virgin Voyages which is the new adults only cruise line from Richard Branson is one of the most sustainable cruises in the industry. Sustainability is the core of Virgin Voyages values. Virgin Voyages actively seeks out partners that are green and sustainability friendly as well like Intelligentsia Coffee and Emerald Brand. Intelligentsia Coffee will be served complimentary on Scarlet Lady which is Virgin Voyages first ship. Intelligentsia uses a direct trade model which means that they purchase directly from the growers from coffee producing regions. Emerald Brand produces tree free and plastic free products such as bath and facial tissue, straws, bottles etc. Virgin Voyages will no have any single use items on their ships. In addition guest will be have filtered and sparkling water complimentary on board from Natura filtered water filing stations.

This article is based on how we can improved e-wastes on doing little changes that will benefit on our future. Most of the e-waste is not recycle properly, we buy things after things and more after more, every time a new technology comes up there is the motivation on buying what is the lasted cool technology, and what about what we have , where does it go ? to the trash or recycle, but we do not know where that recycling goes, I believe learning more about it will help on our routine of how to recycle better and help with this process to proceed right.

We quickly move to 'next' as far as technology goes and rarely think about how to get rid of it when obsolete. In the Caribbean for example, there are not may recycling plants for e-waste, in fact, many rarely do recycling on a whole. In the Turks and Caicos, disposing of a television or a phone is as simple as throwing it in the trash among everything else. What happens next? It goes into the landfills and there they lie. Imagine the toxic waste from over 40,000 inhabitants on a small island. While moving with the crowd seems to be the way of the world, I believe government entities must act swiftly in ensuring e-waste is disposed of correctly to preserve this island and its inhabitants for generations to come. The technology should not outpace the disposal thereof.

"Being "green" is more than just complying with local municipal codes; it's about going above and beyond the call of duty to make a difference."

As Peter Greenberg reports, it's simply not enough anymore for hotels to "go green." It is a hotel's responsbility to go above and beyond to help maintain a sustainable environment and limit the polution they are putting out into the world. I found how the initiatives by the Ritz Carlton in Charlotte, NC as well as the efforts from the Palazzo In Las Vegas particularly interesting as both hotels are in markets that one might not assume to be on the cutting edge when it comes to going green and receiving high marks for LEEDS certification. The Ritz-Carlton, a brand known for luxury lodging, might be expected to offer the highest level of service when offering valet parking to their guests. A typical guest might expect to see expensive cars utilizing the valet, however the Ritz has created a bike valet which encourages eco-travel amongst their guests. Personally I find this added "green" feature impressive. I think it allows guests to see just the lengths the hotel is going to in order to go above and beyond the standard green codes. Las Vegas, a city built on the ideas of excess, would not be a location where I would think of many hotels utilizing Green practices. The city is known to run 24 hours 7 days a week non-stop. The Palazzo uses solar panels, water conservation, as well as energy conservation to operate as a Silver LEED certified hotel. This hotel is able to make an impression on it's guests as they are able to operate successfully while conserving resources that will supply Nevada residents additional resources for years to come. I think Greenberg points out perfect examples of who the hotel industry should take notice of in regards to "Going Green." If these hotels are using it to their advantage, shouldn't everyone else?

TripAdvisor just launched the new TripAdvisor GreenLeaders program, which ranks hotels across the U.S. according to their engagement in environmentally-friendly practices like linen and towel re-use, recycling and composting, solar panel and electric car charging station implementation, and green roofing.

With TripAdvisor's launch of the new GreenLeaders program, it will help hoteliers as well as restaurants and other businesses increase their Green initiative commitment. I know for the Florida Green Lodging Certification, it is a simple, yet tedious, form to complete, covering many aspects that can help reduce waste of products, energy, and gasses. Thanks to a bill that was passed in the not-so-distant past, certain aspects of the government travel requires their selection of lodging and/or meeting facilities to be green. This is in an effort to encourage those changes in order to secure government business, as well as to encourage personal & leisure travel, government or not, to choose green facilities. The more we increase the demand for green properties, the more properties will seek to make the necessary changes and commitment. In addition, the application process changes periodically, increasing the information and steps necessary to become green. Through all of that, we will begin to notice bigger steps to be made to save our resources and our environment. TripAdvisor launching this program will only help in these efforts. Along with increasing efforts, the feedback will be a great tool for use when selecting how to make those changes. Sure, nothing is perfect and you will still have those that prefer the convenience instead of the overall "Save the Earth" way of life, but we will be able to see what is working and what may need to be adjusted a bit.

1. IT The hot-button issue within the realm of hotel-information technology is mobile and cloud technology.A company could have tens of thousands of smartphones or laptops in the field at any given point-each a potential gateway to hackers and other criminals. To the problem the core principle is to provide end-to-end data protection with looking at cost and benefit and how it's supports the business. 2. Terrorism Ironically, one of the main reasons terrorism tops the list is because it has become less of an issue in recent years.Hoteliers need to keep their staffs and travelers mindful of possible threats, but they don't want to scare them. 3. Skimmers A related threat is that of "skimmers," or devices that catch credit card numbers when consumers use them for payment.The best prevention measure is to have an investigative team or third party on hand and making that known to employees. 4. Liability and insurance fraud These two related issues can double, triple, quadruple and quintuple corporate insurance premiums in the blink of an eye. The advisement is hoteliers to educate themselves on the issue, consulting with an attorney, if necessary. 5. Security as taboo "Security" still is something of a taboo in the global hotel industry.Hoteliers need to do a better job of "turning on the light" by talking about security openly and regularly at staff and association meetings, and hotel executives should insist their GMs make security a priority

1. ITAccording to the article, most mobile devices that are used for business are unprotected. Meaning that the devices if the device even have a password and if it does the password is not very complex. There could be thousands of employees accessing company information via the cloud through unprotected smart phones or other mobile devices. This could organizations at risk to hackers and other criminals  2.  TerrorismAlthough terrorist threats are less of a concern nowadays, that does not mean hotel managers should discontinue stressing the importance of security within their establishments. Keeping employees aware and diligent can prove to be a delicate assignment but it is a necessary of part of maintaining a safe work environment in the twenty-first century. 3.  SkimmersSkimmers are devices that steal credit card numbers when consumers use them for payment. Unfortunately, it is most commonly an employee on the inside who is committing the crime.  A third party investigation team will be needed to prove who is stealing from the establishment.  4. Liability and Insurance FraudCombined, these two issues could sky rocket a company's insurance costs through the roof. It is crucial that hoteliers be aware of the legal system and educates themselves on issues concerning liability. Both patrons and employees alike could potentially file claims against an establishment and entitlements can quickly get out of hand.    5.  SecurityDespite the best security measures, there is always the possibility of unforeseen danger. This fear of the unknown is a concern for hotel workers. To confront this fear of the unknown managers must regularly and openly discuss security with employees.  Security should be held as a top priority. 

This article discusses five main concerns brought on by the current state of hotel security. I must say that some of this information surprised me. Something that especially surprised me was learning that mobile devices that are used for business hardly use passwords. The article states, "Amplifying the problem is the sheer number of devices, he added. A company could have tens of thousands of smartphones or laptops in the field at any given point-each a potential gateway to hackers and other criminals." This piece of information is very unsettling to me. How could such valuable information not be protected? The article suggests the solution to this problem is PCI DSS. Terrorism as number two on this list also surprised me because that is not something that would first come to mind for me. The article states that it is ironically on the list for becoming less of an issue. I suppose this reminds hoteliers to never let their guard down when it comes to issues of safety and security within the hotel. However, "skimmers" and liability on this list does not really surprise me. The article suggests that hoteliers be educated about these issues to protect the hotel against them.

This article is very interesting because it does not focus solely on one type of technology, but rather summarizes several technologies and discusses the importance of their uses. Green technologies in hotels can vary from anything affecting the water heating system to air ventilation and even plumbing systems in hotels. As stated in the article, it is extremely important for hoteliers to be aware of these changes that are occurring. Hoteliers may not have to immediately alter their current systems but they should definitely be aware and in tuned to the ever-changing "green" technologies - for if they don't they may be putting their hotels at risk.

This article is basically talking about the different green ways that a hotel can operate. For instance in Denmark they have stations set up where a guest can pedal stationary bikes to produce energy which in exchange they receive a free meal from the restaurant. To make hotels more green the hotels are using higher technological systems like changing the ventilation systems that provide fresh air indoors and have timers on the exhaust in the bathrooms. These technological advances to the properties will be more pricey than normal systems but in the long run they will save these hotels money and help them be more earth friendly.

Having worked in the meetings industry for 5 years now, we have also seen the increase of the more eco friendly traveler/meeting planner/attendee. Our accommodations have taken an active stance to incorporate more of the green friendly features to meet the needs of this traveler, but also to cut costs and increase operations efficiency.

This article suggests EC fans technology as one of ways to save energy in hotel rooms. The room temperature can be set and EC fans can modulate gently, instead of the occupant having to blast the room with warm then cold air. EC fans are not only less noisy, but they provide better room conditions for guests too. And I'm sure that there are more various systems available for green hotels besides EC fan. Technology is being a huge help to save energy cost. Therefore, I think that adopting a proper technology will be a crucial decision when the hotels are going green. 

Lodging's Leading Environmental News Source

The American Hotel & Lodging Association and TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel site, have joined forces on their sustainability initiatives to encourage the hospitality industry to adopt more eco-friendly practices. this partnership will effectively educate consumers about green practices incorporated by the lodging industry in their operations, and it aligns these two important industry programs.