‘Fixing the Basics Right to Fix the Green Hotel’
BW HOTELIER organised its third Smart Hotels Conclave and Expo 2017 on 26th September, 2017 at The Park, New Delhi. This year the conclave focused on generating new ideas for moving towards the smarter ideas of development.
In the GM’s Round Table session of the BW Hotelier event, several General Managers came together to discuss ‘The ROI Perspective: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Switching to New Green Technologies’. The eminent panellist for the hour were, Zubin Songadwala, General Manager, ITC Maurya, New Delhi; Michel Koopman, General Manager, The Leela Ambience, Gurugram; Rajat Sethi, General Manager, The Grand Vasant Kunj and Dhananjay kumar, General Manager, The suryaa New Delhi.
The session was moderated by Bikramjit Ray, Executive Editor, BW Hotelier who took the discussion forward by raising the question on challenges faced in making the hotel green. Songadwala feels that one of the biggest challenges is seeking intervention by government to alter its policies to make the hotel greener. “However, ITC has been focusing on green building and initiatives from far way back being the LEED platinum Certified,” he stated.
Agreeing to Songadwala, Koopman said, “I agree the policies are highly complicated and nobody take these policies seriously here. It’s about fixing the basics first to fix the green concept for the hotels.” He also paid emphasis on the hospitality schools, where there is a higher urgency of the Green Forum subject to be added on the curriculum.
Moving the discussion around The Suryaa, Kumar said, "Its a smart conclave and if we are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound in our approach to convince owner to invest in technology they will invest and with that we have been able to install organic converter, solar panel which gives us hot water which is utilized in kitchen." He also briefed about the robotic machine the hotel has installed that cleans up the swimming pool saving the total consumption of electricity by 70 per cent.
However, with the known fact of HLP becoming expensive, Sethi believes that the need of the hour is technology which can further take the roots down to the better cost benefit analysis.
