Hamburg, 9 January 2023
The year 2023 started with an exciting event at the Empire Riverside Hotel: our first Sustainability Day.
With rousing workshops from our partners and a plenary session in which our plans, successes and challenges were presented transparently, we were able to give all participants something to take with them on their way to making the world a little bit better.
After many months of planning, we were finally able to put our first Sustainability Day into action on 9 January.
In addition to almost 300 employees of our two hotels Empire Riverside Hotel and Hotel Hafen Hamburg in four sessions, we were also able to welcome 70 customers and partners in the evening.
Starting with a plenary session in our ballroom, in which hotel director Enrico Ungermann and two members of the internal sustainability project team reported on our path to becoming a more sustainable company, the participants were then able to take part in the workshops of our partners that they had previously selected.
Which workshops were offered, what we have to tell you about our path to sustainability and which challenges we have already had to face, we have summarised for you again below.
Let's clean up our city of Hamburg!
Water for all, all for water!
Modern Beekeeping.
For Hamburg's children - we are here!
Restricted area: St. Pauli
Environmentally friendly alternatives for the future.
At the beginning of 2022, we set up a project group that deals with the topic of sustainability at the Empire Riverside Hotel and the Hotel Hafen Hamburg, develops a project plan and works together to make our companies more sustainable.
Consisting of the departments Technology, Kitchen, Purchasing, Human Resources, Sales, Reservations, Marketing and Management, we have thus created a team that is composed of all relevant departments in order to be able to consider all pillars of sustainability and to be able to advise and act with the corresponding expertise.
In our first sustainability blog we have written a little more about our project plan, our first successes and ideas. Get an overview of the beginning of our project team "Sustainability for our hotels" here.
When drawing up our project plan, we were guided by the "Green Key" sustainability label for hotels and, in a long, extensive brainstorming phase, we worked out the topics that we would like to elaborate and work on at the beginning. Each of these main topics consists of hundreds of sub-topics, of which only a small fraction is shown in the mind map.
Read moreThrough various changes we have made since 2019*, we have already been able to save a large amount of electricity, water and waste.
Some of these measures were:
- installation of water-saving showers and taps
- urinals without water
- kitchen appliances with reduced water consumption
- supplier agreement on packaging return
- reusable instead of disposable -> fewer portioned products
- energy-efficient light sources (75%)
- motion detectors in back office and public areas
- automatically controlled dust extraction bonnets
*We compare 2022 with 2019 because we can only draw a financial year with reliable data in the comparison from the period before the pandemic and lockdown.
Saved: 8.5% Corresponds to: Annual consumption of 73 households
Saved: 11.32% Equivalent to: 1.5 Olympic swimming pools
Saved: 49.8% Equals: 4,197 beer barrels
One decision we made after our brainstorm within the sustainability team was to make ourselves measurable through a sustainability seal.
Some of the projects we had on our project plan had to be discarded after we had checked them.
In our presentation, we talked transparently about the fact that, as much as we would like to, not everything is possible.
For example, the introduction of a sustainable conference package - here the demand on the part of the customers is missing, which is why other packages would continue to be booked preferentially, as many still do not see the higher price as justified.
In addition, it is hardly possible in the hotel industry to introduce a clear regulation for family-friendly working hours. Due to the constant operation of a hotel, shift work cannot be avoided. Of course, we try to find a suitable solution for each department - a generalisation is simply not possible.
Another challenge was the formulation of measurable sustainability goals. Since we are still at the very beginning, it is difficult for us to already determine whether it would be more worthwhile to save on gas or on electricity. Or in other areas? And what percentage is appropriate and feasible? We will ask ourselves all these questions within the next 12 months and aim to be able to present smart goals at the next Sustainability Day.
19.12.2022
Environmental protection and saving resources are more important today than ever before. For decades, our society has been anything but economical with all the resources at our disposal. Whether water, electricity, nature, animals or people.
Read more31.08.2022
Our great commitment to ecological, economic and social sustainability has proven successful.
As of now, the Empire Riverside Hotel at Hamburg's harbour is one of the certified GreenSign Hotels and has thus been awarded Level 4 out of 5 for its sustainability.
Read more