InterContinental Sponsor Dubai Green Tourism Award

Whatever Floats your Boat Recycled Boat Race in Dubai

InterContinental Dubai Festival City are the official hotel sponsors of the recently announced Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) Dubai Green Tourism Award.

The initiatives are part of the departments’ ambitious Sustainable Tourism agenda for the emirate. The initiative will focus on conservation of natural resources and sensible use of energy, water and gas, etc. as their excessive use causes degradation in the environment by disturbing the eco balance in the atmosphere.

Commenting on the hotel’s participation of the award, hotel manager, Steven Greenwood said, “We are delighted to be supporting this initiative, which clearly links the DTCM’s commitment to creating a sustainable future for tourism in the Emirate with InterContinental Hotel Groups’ core value of responsible business through reducing our impact on the environment.”

“While the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza Dubai Festival City properties are relative newcomers to the country’s five star hotel market, having opened our doors just 17 months ago, we have made a conscious effort to implement environmentally sound practices into our business from the outset.”

“As an example, prior to us opening our doors to the first guests, we separated the boxes and other packaging materials that accompanied the many hundreds of tons of deliveries, and arranged for these to be recycled. This has been supported by an ongoing recycling program where we encourage all colleagues within the hotels to recycle waste (paper, plastic, glass and aluminum) throughout our operations.”

“We are currently working on a project with our partners Philips and Ecoventure to replace the entire lighting system of the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza hotels with a more energy efficient LED system, an industry first project within the region.”

InterContinental is the first hotel in the UAE to welcome Lexus LS600 Hybrid limousines into its fleet. Said Steven “Together with our partners Al Futtaim Motors, we have a first class transfer experience for our guests which is both energy efficient and luxurious.”

“InterContinental Hotels Group is committed to finding new ways of reducing our environmental impact. As such, the company has just launched Green Engage, an on-line tool designed by IHG to help hotels measure, manage and report their environmental credentials.”

Green Engage has been tested in a number of global locations. Through measuring the usage of energy and water, the amount of waste and the carbon emissions of each hotel, the system has led to reductions of 25% in hotel energy use. This figure is clearly in line with the DTCM’s initiative of reducing carbon emissions by 20% in the hotel sector by the end of 2011. Hotels can then benchmark themselves against other hotels of a familiar size and set reduction targets.

Reservations teams at the hotel have a paperless filing system in place. All room and restaurant confirmations are delivered to the guest via email, and all records of such bookings are stored electronically.

In October 2008, InterContinental initiated and organised the inaugural ‘Whatever Floats Your Boat’ recycled boat race. The competition is designed to act as an awareness drive and fundraiser for local charity (Emirates Environmental Group). Local companies were encouraged to back to the environment by donating AED 10,000 to construct and race boats made from recycled material along the creek beside the hotel. Twelve teams, including two schools, participated raising over AED 100,000 for the EEG’s ‘clean the creek’ campaign.

Valere Tjolle