Our vision
Our vision has been to attain our Green Tourism accreditation and we are pleased to have recently been awarded the gold award across all three hotels for our work. As we take steps along this journey, we will continually look to improve, make sustainable choices and embed sustainable practices across everything we do and the way that every person in our team thinks.
Our Sustainability Policy is designed to act as a framework to enable all stakeholders to use as guidance across all general hotel operations. Stakeholders include both internal and external team members as well as hotel guests (where applicable).
In delivering this, all our team will endeavour to:
- Work diligently to minimise our waste and conserve natural resources, particularly through energy and water conservation.
- Partner with Greenview who monitor our energy and water use and calculate our waste. They help us to record our sustainability initiatives and also work out our energy usage per bedroom and per guest to enable us to set specific energy saving targets.
- Reduce and measure our CO2 emissions on an annual basis using the Hotel Carbon Management Initiative (HCMI) measuring tool.
- Reduce use of pollutants and harmful chemicals both outside and inside our hotels. Wherever possible making sure cleaning materials are eco-friendly.
- Make environmental considerations an important part of decision-making.
- Aim to become single-use plastic free across our business.
- Responsibly source local produce wherever possible to help reduce our environmental impact. We aim to partner with more local suppliers to support our efforts and bake in-house to serve seasonal menus to ensure our dishes are fresh and delicious.
- Build local partnerships in the communities where we do business.
- Consider the opinions of our guests and employees when examining our environmental programmes and procedures, and to actively encourage feedback from our stakeholders.
- Identify areas for improvement and innovation at each hotel and support the efforts of our onsite green teams.
- Value the cultural heritage of our hotels, allowing us to give our guests an authentically local experience.
SOURCING LOCALLY
All of our menus are crammed full of quality ingredients and produce produced by suppliers based locally to each hotel. Not only does this make a significant reduction to our carbon footprint, it helps to contribute back into our local community and regional economies. It also means our dishes are bursting with quality flavours which adds to the overall dining experience. Take for example Woodchester wines, based in the Cotswolds and rated one of the best Sauvignon Blancs in the world, who supply wine to The Queens Hotel.
It is not just food that is sourced locally. All the toiletries used throughout the hotels are supplied by 100 Acres, a British botanical perfumery company who use 100% natural oils to produce their organic products.
Giving back with your feedback
Feedback about your visit means everything to us. It helps us to know what we are doing right and learn from any mistakes we may make. And, every time you give us feedback (good or constructive) either via an online site or by direct email to us, then we will plant a tree with our partner More Trees and support their tree planting and community programmes in North Haiti, East Kenya and Madagascar. It is a little way of us continuing to make small steps towards a greater change for our planet.
With guest experience, community and sustainability such a key part of everything we do, our give back for feedback initiative combines all three elements seamlessly together. Ask a member of the team about this initiative during your next stay or head to a review site now to leave a review.
Green Tourism
To promote a greener, cleaner environment for people, places and our plants we are involved with the Green Tourism Accreditation programme and have been awarded the gold award for our work. The Green Tourism programme is acknowledged worldwide as an indicator of a good environmentally friendly practice.
Green Tourism focuses on:
- Reducing energy use.
- Saving water.
- Efficient and eco-friendly waste disposal.
- Ethical buying.
- Staying local and seasonal.
- Minimising food miles.
- Promoting biodiversity.
- Adopting a smart, sustainable outlook from top to bottom.
- Helping to conserve local heritage.
Ask a member of our team if you have any questions on our “green” journey or let us know if you have suggestions of areas where we can improve to ensure that we both meet and exceed your expectations.
CHARITY SUPPORT
Each of our hotels support a number of local charities in their area with their events. The Queens Hotel’s local charity of the year is Gloucester Royal Hospital and they are proud to sponsor the Leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy fund’s annual fashion show in 2022. While Alexander Devine Children’s Hospice is the charity of the year for The Castle Hotel and the hotel team organise a number of initiatives and fundraising events to support them.