Responsible Business - Let's take responsibility

Taking responsibility for the environment and local community has been an important part of Rezidor's broader commitment to sustainable development for many years. In 2001, this commitment was fortified and placed within the scope of a programme called Responsible Business (RB). Each hotel has a unique RB Action Plan covering areas such as community outreach, environmental improvement, employee well-being and health and safety. To read more about the RB programme, please go to www.responsiblebusiness.rezidor.com.

Our hotels are engaged with both local charity groups and Rezidor's corporate international charity organisation, the World Childhood Foundation. The mission of Childhood is to defend the rights of the child and to promote better living conditions for vulnerable and exploited children at risk all over the world.

Here are some of the Responsible Business activities and achievements of this hotel:

• Cuddly toys for Nepal
  In 2006, our staff took heart and donated 150 cuddly toys to orphanages, hospitals and refugee camps in Nepal. That way, we contributed to an activity by the German consumer brands company Henkel who - for the 6th year in a row - personally brought goods and medical supply to Kathmandu. Detailed information on the whole campaign can be found via www.bal-balika-nepal.de.
• Christmas decoration
  The Alexianer Service Betriebe in Cologne, a sheltered workshop for persons with mental challenges, were trusted with decorating the hotel lobby and the restaurants with 6 christmas trees in December 2006. The tallest tree (6 metres) was erected in the 15 metre high glass atrium at the main entrance, and altogether around 3500 ornaments were used. By taking the team of eight employees out of the workshop environment into a location like the hotel, the team leaders gave them an impression of the "real" job market, preparing them for a possible future (re-)entry into the employment market. This was already the second local project of our hotel together with the company.
• Waste management
  Our aim for 2006 was to consequently reduce the production of waste/garbage. This was not the easiest goal to set ourselves, as of course we were aiming to increase our occupancy as well. Resulting in more packaging for food purchases, more confirmation print-outs for reservations, or more garbage collected from the guest rooms, to name a few points. In the end, the number of total guests roughly stayed the same and, unfortunately, we did not reach that reduction aim. But that only makes us even more ambitious for 2007!
• The paperless office
  Re-using copy paper on the backside for internal use has always been a common practice for us. Hence, in 2006 we wanted to take a step further and reduce the purchase of copy paper even further, by only printing out E-Mails if really necessary, for example. The nature of our business, however, does not always allow for this method, as reservations correspondence still needs a bit of back-up copies in the whole process of invoicing and accounting. And also because of many guest requests still being received by fax. That's why our purchase of copy paper actually increased by 20 %, compared to 2005. But we are not standing still: we have joined forces with other sister properties by outsourcing our accounting procedures to a shared services centre, and making the whole correspondence process with the centre digital. This way, we are getting on track to a paperless office and towards better helping the environment.
• Environmentally friendly supplies
  In order to keep a balance of cleaning the guest rooms and public areas of our hotel according to the highest standards, and burden the environment as little as possible, we have switched supplies wherever we can. Preferably, our departments purchase products bearing environment labels like the Blue Angel, or detergents with natural ingredients by Frosch brand. These are our efforts to least pollute the 57.600 cubic litres of wastewater the hotel produced in 2006.
• Keeping our grounds tidy
  In order to relieve the communal cleaners and to keep our grounds and the hotel surroundings tidy and free from litter, our team of apprentices chooses to make regular patrols around our property. Equipped with trash bags they search the driveway and sidewalks for anything that should not be lying around there. This way we make the hotel approach more appealing for both guests and our staff alike. And our community will feel more comfortable with us as their neighbours as well.
• Energy-conscious
  Light bulbs, being one of the biggest energy consumers, have been a very big target of ours. Especially the underground garage with its 160-parking spaces has been equipped with a motion detector, so that in times of less traffic, the lights will be off. This way we are aiming to reduce the use of electricity by roughly 30 %. Likewise our three kitchens have been provided with these detectors, in order to avoid energy wastage when some areas (e.g. production kitchen) are not continuously used. Here, about 20 % of power will be saved.