QHotels Scoops Green Gong at AA Hospitality Awards
QHotels is celebrating after winning the AA Eco Hotel Group of the Year award 2011-2012 at the AA Hospitality Awards ceremony held on Monday 26 September.
The award reflects QHotels’ continued commitment to sustainability through green initiatives across its collection of 21 unique hotels. These programmes have led to reduced energy consumption, improved awareness across the group, increased use of local and sustainable products and support of local and national worthwhile causes.
Michael Purtill, Managing Director of QHotels, said: "We are honoured to receive such a prestigious award that firmly demonstrates our position as the greenest hotel group in the UK. It reflects the hard work of our dedicated team, which ensures our green initiatives are implemented in every hotel and performance is continually measured and monitored. We continue to reduce our carbon footprint, and we are constantly looking at new ways to improve our green agenda in the future."
The award comes just weeks after QHotels also received 7 Gold awards and 15 Silver awards through the Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) accreditation, the national tourism certification programme. This marked an improvement of up to 25% at some hotels following initial GTBS audits in 2009 and helped contribute hugely to the award win.
An improved recycling programme, introduction of green champions at each hotel, launch of a carbon offsetting scheme for guests and conference organisers and the installation of electric car chargers at three hotels across the collection are just a few further examples of the many initiatives that also contributed to the GTBS Award.
QHotels also won AA Hotel Group of the Year 2008 - 2009 and has successfully reduced energy consumption year on year and has a target to further reduce consumption by 15% on 2008 figures. It has saved 2,747 tonnes of CO2 through its energy-saving schemes, raised almost £100k towards Asthma UK and generated £126k in conference enquiries that have requested to offset the carbon used during their event with QHotels.
