Torquay hotel group awarded

TLH Leisure Resort has gained Silver and Bronze Awards in a national Green Tourism scheme which encourages companies across the country to change their environmental practices for the better. And it’s all down to the staff who challenged the senior management to adopt the initiative in the first place.

The Toorak Hotel gained a Silver award and the group’s three other hotels – the Victoria, Carlton and Derwent – each received a Bronze award.

The award brings to an end nearly eight months of seeing, eating and thinking ‘green’ in order to meet the strict criteria.

The Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) has its headquarters in Scotland and is being spearheaded in this region by South West Tourism, to encourage as many businesses as possible to adopt good environmental practices and help to preserve the beauty of the Devon countryside and coastline for future generations of visitors. After all it is two of the main features which attracts them here in the first place. Over 150 firms and organisations throughout Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset have already taken up the scheme.

The scheme provides advice to enable businesses to reduce their environmental impact by managing waste and consumption of resources such as food, energy and water while, at the same time, encouraging wildlife and recycling

It was back in the Spring of last year that several of TLH’s workforce suggested at one of their forum meetings that the company should be ‘greener’ and ‘doing more’ towards energy conservation. As a result, the group chose three of its senior management team – Peter Lloyd, Nigel Beck and Ian Rick – to spearhead the green project. They attended a special Green Awareness seminar and learnt all about the aims of the GTBS scheme and the actions which businesses needed to take to help reduce global warming and protect the environment for future generations.

Over a period of six months the green team helped to put in place energy saving and waste reducing measures and compiled a portfolio of evidence to present to the Green Tourism Board whose assessor visited the hotel complex  to carry out a 126 point evaluation of the operation.

“The assessor was very thorough and left no stone unturned so we are over the moon that we have achieved a Silver and three Bronze awards in such a short space of time,” explained Peter Lloyd, the group’s property manager.

“Energy and water consumption was one area we felt we should be able to make significant savings and one of the most important. We had always measured and recorded our utility consumption figures but realised that better results could be achieved if we could engage the whole TLH workforce in saving energy. A ‘Switch off, Turn off, Turn down’ campaign was implemented and the recorded data was turned into monthly cost, usage and trend graphs for every area of the business. The detailed information on electricity, gas and water usage and running costs was available to all staff and quickly highlighted problem areas to be tackled “Peter explained.

“The campaign was embraced by everyone with the result consumption has been reduced across the board. One of the biggest successes has been the 50% reduction amount of water used in our swimming pools which was achieved by giving the pool team ownership of the water consumption and maintaining daily water use records.

“We have also invested new water controls, auto fill system for swimming pools, push taps and urinal controls in cloakrooms, low flush cistern and pressure reduction valves in guest rooms. Low energy bulbs have replaced ordinary bulbs in many areas. The company has also introduced two new additional ‘heating’ seasons ‘Autumn’ and ‘Spring’ with reduced settings which ensure there is less waste during the heating season.

“As with most modern businesses 100% of the waste produced by TLH went to landfill and we have now reduced our landfill quota by recycling glass, paper, cardboard and even the green waste from the busy Toorak Hotel kitchens is being recycled as compost for use in the grounds in our own compost bins,” Peter added.

The group is also helping to reduce ‘food’ miles by engaging as many local suppliers as possible rather than transporting food great distances around the country and the world. They obtain their bread freshly baked each day from the Grand Hotel less than a mile away.

Guests too are encouraged to support TLH’s initiatives by arriving at the resort by coach or train and making use of their minibus pick up service. The ‘What To Do’ and ‘Where To Go’ programmes include suggestions that visitors forget their cars for a day and choose instead to cycle around some of South Devon’s beautiful cycle routes.

Many of the green initiatives have been tried at the Toorak Hotel first which helped it to gain it’s the Silver award. But Peter Lloyd says many of the trials have proved so successful they will soon be rolled out into the other hotels.

A specific scheme unique to the Toorak Hotel is transforming a piece of waste ground into a habitat designed to encourage birds, butterflies, and other wildlife to take up residence and flourish. The area, when completed will become a regular haunt for the group’s Children’s Club who will be educated about the site and have fun playing I Spy looking for it’s residents.

Nigel Beck added: “We are delighted by the efforts which have been made and that we will continue to make to achieve a greener more environmentally aware business and we are thankful and proud of all our staff who initiated the idea in the first place. This is only the beginning we are aiming for gold.”

9 February 2007