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Rotana Hotels and Resorts: Endless Wonder and Everlasting Memories
Introduction
Rotana is a hospitality management company with over 113 stunning properties in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Turkey, and a widely recognized and admired brand all over the world. Rotana’s mission is to offer guests treasured time - time being a precious resource. Regardless of the nature of guests’ visits, whether for business, leisure or special occasions, Rotana is committed to delivering a perfect customer experience by providing friendly encounters, impeccable environments and services of the highest quality. Armed in the knowledge that each guest is different, Rotana strives to create new ways to accommodate individual needs.
To deliver on their promise of unique guest experiences, Rotana takes a holistic approach to sustainability involving their guests, hotel staff and suppliers. There are, in fact, many initiatives in place to successfully implement Rotana’s sustainability management program along with a culture ingrained with integrity, transparency and accountability in every part of the company.
The Rotana and Ecolab Partnership
Given Rotana’s global reach and to ensure the same seamless level of service and standards across all properties, Rotana needed a reliable partner, able to offer service at a global level to support their efforts in providing the best possible customer experience. Rotana and Ecolab have been partnering for eleven years and working together, striving for excellence in many areas from the hotel kitchen, housekeeping and laundry to pool and spa, water solutions, auditing and training. This collaboration in 12 countries and 52 locations resulted in several innovative solutions that Rotana and Ecolab implemented at these sites.
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“Our long-standing partnership with Ecolab is part of Rotana’s ongoing drive to develop an environmentally conscious approach across all of our operational activities, and has resulted in significant improvements. The initiatives we have jointly introduced align perfectly with Rotana Earth, our global corporate sustainability platform that addresses the pressing environmental, economic and social concerns of our time. While we are proud of all we have achieved to date, we recognize there is always room to progress and will continue to seek out fresh avenues to enhance sustainability.”
– Christiane Abou Zeidan, Rotana’s Corporate Director of Environment, Health and Safety
The Solutions
A noteworthy example of Ecolab’s most sustainable solutions implemented by the Rotana Group is Solid Power™ XL, a technology that uses solid detergents for ware washing. Using solid detergents instead of liquids reduces packaging waste by 80% as the products do not contain water, are less voluminous and eliminate the need for hard plastic packaging. The more compact packaging also reduces storage space and waste pickup costs. In addition, this is a much safer product for hotel staff to handle as there is no risk of spillage – a win-win all around.
Beside using the Solid Power™, Rotana and Ecolab are implementing another important initiative to reduce plastic when and wherever possible throughout the hotel chain’s operations. As part of this effort, a new parallel initiative was launched to recycle plastic containers. Ecolab collects the empty bottles from Rotana properties and brings them to an external partner for recycling as part of the production chain.
In the laundry environment, the Oxyguard40™ Technology was implemented to wash at low temperatures while maintaining high levels of effectiveness and the whiteness of linen.
The Oxyguard40 Technology is an ecological cleaning program certified by the Ecolabel certificate. Using Oxyguard40 decreases water and energy consumption and increases the reuse of linen by up to 20%, instead of needing to have them changed more frequently due to persistent spots or greyness. Linen washed with Oxyguard40 is sanitized, ensuring the maximum level of hygiene.
The Results
The successful implementation of the Oxyguard40 low temperature laundry innovation in Rotana’s on-premise laundries has allowed savings in several of Rotana’s properties. By implementing Oxyguard40 we saved 65,277 m3 of water, equivalent to the drinking water needs of more than 248,000 people for one year**. In addition, over 2,896,600 kwh of energy consumption was saved, equivalent to more than 261 million smartphones charged. Oxyguard40 is an advanced technology for a higher level of cleaning, achieving consistently superior clean, white, soft and fresh results. Oxyguard40 reduces wash cycle times, increasing the longevity of the linen lifespan.
Projections are to sustain and significantly increase these savings numbers for years to come.
Thanks to the use of Solid Power XL, plastic waste has been reduced by 34%, storage requirements by 30% and costs by 10%, just taking into consideration properties in UEA, Turkey and South Africa this year.
Last but not least, training is an essential ingredient of Ecolab’s offering to Rotana, an integral part of Ecolab’s “Circle the Customer” approach, which aims to service customers in a holistic, 360° manner. In order to achieve sustainable results, it is fundamental to simplify processes and ensure all involved stakeholders utilize technologies as per prescribed standards to reach maximum efficiency and the same seamless quality in all offerings. We introduced the Rotana Cleaning Essentials (RCE) Training program focusing on housekeeping and Laundry departments, which is “tailor-made” to suit Rotana’s cleaning and hygiene brand standards. Currently, properties within the Middle East and Africa region participate in this annual training, which covers the science of cleaning, guest room cleaning, pandemics, odor control and sustainability.
Furthermore, Ecolab provides training during routine service visits. In the last three years, Ecolab has provided 156 dedicated trainings and 322 on-the-job trainings involving almost 1,300 Rotana team members.
Rotana and Ecolab share another important value: giving back to the local communities they operate in. The two companies have been partnering on the Choose to Reuse initiative; the smart scheme consists of donating linens that are no longer used at Rotana’s properties to local charities. Organized by Rotana Earth and Ecolab, the initiative was launched in 2016, whereby, Ecolab sales teams collect and donate linens to local charities. In the UAE alone, the Dar Al Bir charity has received more than two tons of donated linen since the beginning of the project.
(*) Compared to traditional 70°C washings
(**) The average American drinks 263 liters of water per year, so 100,000 liters represents 380 years’ worth of drinking water.
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