Hotel Neutraal: collective sustainability effort by Rotterdam hotels

10/19/22

Over the next year, a group of sixteen Rotterdam hotels will be working together to make their organisations more sustainable. Under the name of Hotel Neutraal, they will collectively be taking steps towards a CO2-neutral and circular future. Steps that ensure energy reduction, less waste, more circular products, water savings, lower CO2 emissions, cost savings and all-in-all a greener Rotterdam.

Hotel Neutraal was developed by Green Leisure Group in collaboration with three Rotterdam project partners: BlueCity, Rotterdam Partners and the Municipality of Rotterdam. The sixteen Rotterdam hotels that have joined are Hostel Room, Stayokay, The James, Supernova Hotel, Hotel New York, NH Atlanta, Nhow, H2otel, Room Mate Bruno, Bilderberg Parkhotel, The Bellhop, Hotel van Walsum, The Student Hotel, The Slaak, Marriott Hotel and Postillion Hotel WTC. Together, these hotels are taking the first major steps towards Hotel Neutral in 2050. VANG Buitenshuis supports the project financially.

Kick-off Hotel Neutral by alderman Simons

The kick-off of the project took place on October 19 2022 at Postillion WTC Hotel Rotterdam. In the presence of alderman Simons, the hoteliers and project partners got acquainted and shared experiences and circular opportunities. Mark Slegers of Rotterzwam presented options for hotels to collect coffee grounds and find a way of processing these into products on their own menu in a circular way. Lola Slager from Orbisk presented opportunities for hoteliers to reduce food waste and thus save money immediately.

Direct and tailormade insights and practical tools

The Rotterdam hotels have had to deal with a lot in the past period: lockdowns due to COVID-19, strong price increases, staff shortages and on top of that the sustainability challenge. The hotels could therefore use some help. Hotel Neutraal aims to provide the Rotterdam hotel with direct and tailormade insights into sustainable opportunities and practical tools to get started immediately and also to initiate collective circular and sustainable business cases that lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions and lower use of raw materials.

One of the participating hotels is Hostel Room. Owner Monique Segeren is looking forward to participating in the project. “We see that for our guests and employees sustainability is becoming an increasingly important theme. Rising energy costs and increasingly strict environmental legislation also mean that we must continue to take steps towards sustainability. In this process we hope to gain more insight into the sustainable quick wins and to learn from the other participating hotels.”

Eveline van der Pluijm of Rotterdam Partners sees the Hotel Neutraal project as an ideal opportunity to profile the city of Rotterdam to the outside world: “Sustainability is an important criterion for more and more conference organisations in selecting a city for their conference. The fact that the Rotterdam hotels are becoming more sustainable through Hotel Neutraal helps us attract important international conferences to Rotterdam.”

Green Leisure Group will visit all hotels in October and November of this year for a baseline measurement and to provide insights into sustainable opportunities. A plan for each participating hotel will then be made. The hotels will be subsequently supported and guided in implementing the sustainable measures. Results will be shared in the final meeting in May 2023. Hotel Neutraal and the progress of the hotels can be followed over the coming months via the BlueCity / Hotel Neutraal website and on the LinkedIn feeds of all project partners.

To the Hotel Neutraal website