Top 10 Sustainable Hotels & Conference Venues – September 2021
As the leading venue finding agency specialising in the sustainable / green sector we have visited hundreds perhaps thousands of hotels and conference centres. Never has the climate crisis been more pressing, never has it been harder to distinguish beneath myth and reality. There are literally hundreds of accreditation schemes, Green Tourism, Green Mark, Green Key, Breem ratings to name but a few. If you are looking for a hotel, a conference room or a meeting venue, now is the time user a venue booking agency. In this post pandemic world, venue contracts are ever less comparable, cancellation clauses are more diverse, prices are divulging. By leveraging our knowledge and purchasing power we can and will save you time and money.
The Zetter Hotel one of the most eco-friendly and sustainable hotels in central London. The converted 19th-century Victorian warehouse features energy-saving technology, eco-friendly materials, and a 1500ft borehole providing the hotel with a private water supply, making the building almost entirely self-sufficient. Rooms are eclectic and varied, featuring vintage items and stocked with environmentally friendly REN toiletries. Food is delivered by Pedal Me (a cycle courier of goods and people) instead of taxis, and free Brompton bikes are available for guests to use.
The standout feature of the Treehouse in Marylebone has to be the biophilic (using design to connect with nature) rooftop bar, with spectacular views across London. Its commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop at the Instagram able aesthetics. As the younger, sibling of sustainably focussed American company 1 Hotels, Treehouse has carried many of the brand’s eco principles across the pond, from conscious construction using recycled materials, to staff training in waste management and reducing single- use plastic. Seasonal British produce inspires menus at 15th floor Casa Madera restaurant and The Nest rooftop bar.
Colourful, mismatched patterns, odd décor – this could only be the work of one designer: Kit Kemp, who owns the Firmdale Hotels group alongside her husband Tim. Ham Yard is an urban village, complete with not only 91 bedrooms but also speciality stores, a rooftop bar, a spa, bowling alley and cinema. And the hotel’s sustainability measures are also worth shouting about. It was awarded BREEAM Excellent rating, a methodology used to assess the environmental performance of buildings, thanks to its use of CHP units and solar panels. It also has its own living green roof, plus a terrace with beehives and a vegetable garden.
A commitment to wellness, sustainability and community makes this stylish new London ‘mindfulness hotel’ stand out from the crowd. It recently achieved Green Key certification, the tourism industry’s leading award for environmental responsibility, and its Scandi-chic rooms feature furnishings and products from ethical names such as Aerende and REN. The hotel also hosts Yeotown, the plant-centric restaurant that offers California-inspired healthy and wholesome food.
Inhabit’s focus on sustainability is just one element of its overarching ethos of wellness and wellbeing, which the hotel encourages through a packed programme of daily yoga and Pilates classes, guided nature walks, mindfulness sessions and morning meditation classes.
Set over 130 acres of woodland, gardens and parkland on the edge of the New Forest and the Solent, it’s no wonder nature is at the heart of Chewton Glen. Leading the way are the hotel’s eco-treehouses, which are built along the tree line, and feature harvested rainwater, air-source heat pumps, solar panels, and low-energy lighting.
Many of the fruit, vegetables, herbs and edible flowers used in the hotel’s restaurant and cookery school are harvested from the hotel’s walled garden and orchard. And round the estate, years of tree planting and creating wildlife habitats have led to a boom in biodiversity; building the local populations of owls and hedgehogs is a current focus. There are also more than 50 working beehives dotted around the estate, which help pollinate plants and vegetables grown on-site, and keep nature thriving.
Nature lies at the beating heart of this gorgeous Georgian hotel in the heart of Hampshire. Years in the conception, weaving the strands of a grand English house, its farm and the local community together to create something different from the norm, it has resulted in an ethos of luxurious sustainability. This radiates everywhere from the plastic-free rooms to the dining (headed up by Skye Gyngell), where the seasonal produce is grown on its own biodynamic and organic farm (with the rest locally sourced); from the biomass energy centre to the LED lighting to the use of their own bore hole. They are also cloning their specimen trees (some over 150 years old) to ensure succession planting of varieties including Giant Redwoods, Douglas Fir and Japanese Cedar. A bold and ambitious project, a delight to discover and a treat to stay at.
Anyone who’s been to one of The Pig’s many renowned “restaurant with rooms” will know that this hotel group is serious about serving up locally sourced and sustainable food. The group’s newest member, The PIG-at Combe, is no different, with emphasis placed on the ‘25-mile menu’ concept, where seasonal dishes are entirely dependent on the kitchen gardens and local suppliers. Even botanical cocktails served in the bar have been infused with homegrown herbs lovingly plucked from the estate. The country hotel – which produces approximately 3.4 tons of its own fruit and vegetables every year – is also home to local beehives and works to reduce as much waste as possible, even growing its own mushrooms on used coffee grounds from the hotel restaurant. As for the interiors, a number of antique and upcycled furnishings have been used to create the hotel’s signature sumptuous-cum-rustic aesthetic.
In 2016 the BMA achieved a zero-to-landfill status. The venue’s green credentials include reducing its delegate carbon footprint by 69 per cent, cutting its water wastage by 5.4 million litres a year and recycling upwards of 46,700kg of waste since 2019. These green initiatives have earned BMA House a wealth of awards including, Greenest Venue by Hire Space in 2018 and 2019, Most Sustainable Venue by the London Summer Event Show in 2019, and a silver award for Best CSR or Sustainability Initiative at the 2019 London Venues Award.
BMA House also offers planners an inner-city sanctum in its rooftop Mindful Garden where herbs used by the venue’s chefs, are grown.
Wellcome Collection Conference Centre
London’s Wellcome Collection operates a zero–to–landfill process for all waste streams. General waste is converted into energy for the National Grid with the ash produced from the incineration process collected as a source for building materials and used to make bricks or repair road surfaces.
To reduce food waste, Wellcome Collection works with food waste management system, Winnow to monitor food waste from events. In the inevitability that food waste occurs, it is collected separately from the kitchens and sent to anaerobic digestion where it is broken down to produce biogas and fertiliser.
Winner of over 14 awards for sustainability and customer service. Most recently in 2021, gold for sustainability in the clean city awards. Previous victories include Best Venue Customer Service and Most Sustainable Venue in the conference awards.
Building on their zero to landfill credentials and constant striving to reduce ALL waste streams, they are now investing in direct carbon offset projects, they are offsetting all of the carbon created by their operations including delegates coming to the venue.
The natural environment has been incorporated into outdoor meeting spaces and breakout walking trails, as well as creating daylight and woodland views inside the venue to promote wellbeing.
Other sustainable features include water fountains with free to use reusable bottles and recycling stations. Food waste is sent to Bryn Power anaerobic digestion facility to generate low carbon electricity for the South Wales grid, tinted glass to reduce heat gain from the sun, smart low‐energy LED lighting and 15,000 shrubs and trees planted on the grounds to complement native woodland.
Edinburgh International Conference Centre
The Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) recently launched its ‘Step Change’ sustainability programme. This aims to provide every event at the venue with a detailed and bespoke Event Impact Report, focusing on those three key areas: societal, environmental and economic.
The EICC’s new Step Change programme includes a ‘Desk-to-Door’ initiative which encourages everyone travelling to EICC to choose the most sustainable option for their trip.
The venue has also vouched will mitigate the carbon impact of events through peatland restoration projects across Scotland, with a primary focus on The Flow Country in Caithness and Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands.
Sustainability practices were laid in the foundations of Aberdeen’s P&J Live, situated on The Event Complex Aberdeen. Its two-part onsite energy centre is pivotal to its reputation of being the UK’s most sustainable venue.
Stage one is an anaerobic digestion plant which processes venue food waste and local agricultural waste, releasing a gas, which is then processed by an onsite Hydrogen Fuel Cell Plant, culminating in the provision of hydrogen power for both the venue and the two onsite hotels.
Having sustainably sourced energy offers sustainable options to organisers to keep their event delivery as green as possible; with free Wi–Fi for all delegates and complimentary digital signage for organisers in a quest to minimise paper use wherever possible.
Why not book your conference, meeting, seminar or event now. We can and will save you money!
- Venue contracts have become ever less comparable, hidden costs/cancellation fees / what is and isn’t included.
- There are well over 20,000 venues in the UK, you could spend a lifetime comparing venues, we have visited literally thousands. We can guide you.
- We will leverage our purchasing power to secure the best possible prices
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