Sustainability for the NZ Hospitality Industry

21 October 2008

MEDIA RELEASE Available for immediate use

New Path to Sustainability for the NZ Hospitality Industry

The Hospitality Association of New Zealand (HANZ) is urging members of the NZ hospitality industry to prepare for the new carbon economy - and reap bottom line benefits - by measuring their carbon footprint, adopting sustainable practices, and exceeding customer expectations.

In a partnership announced last week at the Hospitality Showcase 2008, the HANZ annual conference held in Dunedin, HANZ has put its support behind the just-released Green Globe Lite program - a user-friendly, cost-effective on-line program that enables businesses to assess their environmental performance.

"By gaining a better understanding of their resource use and implementing sustainable practices, businesses can reduce their environmental impact and improve operational efficiencies, but can also realise significant cost savings through reduced energy and water use and waste production," said Bruce Robertson, HANZ CEO.

"This partnership provides HANZ members with clear and affordable first steps to adopting sustainable practices and it is really important that we tell our customers the story…."

Developed with input from the Australian Hotels Association, Green Globe Lite is specifically designed for accommodation, hotel, restaurant and bar operators; visitor information centres and administration offices. The program's operational 'health check' involves a quantitative assessment of the business's performance in the areas of energy consumption; CO2 emissions; water consumption and waste production. It also provides guidelines for developing and implementing a sustainability policy.

It meets international standards for carbon footprint calculation and is backed by the STCRC (Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre), the world's leading tourism research body, which is in turn backed by 17 of Australia's leading tertiary education institutions and industry bodies.

"The tourism and hospitality industry is facing a challenging future - one in which it will be held accountable for its environmental performance. Green Globe Lite has been developed in answer to industry demand for a user-friendly, cost-effective tool to manage environmental performance, which can also lead to reduced resource costs and increased profits," said Stewart Moore, Chief Executive Officer of EC3 Global, which manages the Green Globe programme on behalf of Green Globe Asia Pacific.

Under the partnership arrangements, HANZ members have access to exclusive member benefits associated with the Green Globe Lite program. For further information, visit www.greenglobe.org/greenglobelite END

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