The Queens Hotel located in the heart of Cheltenham has been awarded a Gold Green Tourism Award, achieving the first step on its sustainability journey.
Following on from their first GreenCheck, the hotel won the accolade as part of their involvement with the Green Tourism Accreditation Programme, an awards certification programme that strives to amplify the efforts of tourism businesses in becoming more sustainable. Green Tourism’s Bronze/Silver/Gold Awards are acknowledged worldwide as being an indicator of positive environmentally-friendly practice amongst tourism businesses. The Queens Hotel showed excellent communication of their sustainability efforts and made considerable attempts to engage guests in sustainable tourism. The team also demonstrated genuine pleasure in promoting a sustainable accommodation business in the area.
The team worked in partnership with hospitality specialists Mission Net Zero to create a strong and enduring commitment to sustainability. This was reflected in their diverse range of initiatives – where community played a huge part in their scores with team members not only demonstrating their work in engaging the local community but looking to go beyond. Community initiatives include partnering with Cheltenham Festivals across their programme of events and raising a considerable amount of money for local charity Gloucestershire and Cheltenham Hospitals Charity. The team had excellent knowledge of the local area which they encouraged the guest to enjoy sustainably with packages designed to support local attractions such as nearby WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre. Their philosophy on sourcing local produce was also recognised. This includes using their own honey in dishes and on the breakfast buffet produced by the bees on the roof, and baking all bread freshly in-house. Their passion to source locally not only reduces food miles but enhances the guest’s dining experience too.
The Queens Hotel is also paving the way in sustainable tourism with their ‘Give Back for Feedback’ initiative, where every time a guest provides feedback via an online site or by direct email, the hotel will plant a tree with their partner ‘More:trees’, supporting their tree planting and community programmes in North Haiti, East Kenya and Madagascar.
The areas in which the hotel were shown to be particularly strong are the ‘Community’, ‘Awareness’, ‘Health & Wellbeing’ and ‘Experiences’ and ‘Destinations’ categories, demonstrated by the hotel’s distinctive incorporation of a green story within their business ethos, as well as their clear practice of protecting and supporting their team and guest’s health and wellbeing.
For more information on The Queens Hotel ongoing sustainability journey, click here.