Put Your Guests to Work
- Fall colors in the Patagonia, Chile
Hotels are increasingly discovering new ways to get their guests to help them out by generating power for them.
Last month, BBC News reported of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen offering €26 meal vouchers to guests who have generated at least 10 watt hours of electricity (that’s about fifteen minutes) by cycling in their gym. The bicycles will have iPhones attached to the handlebars that measure not how many calories you’ve burned, but rather how much power is being generated for the hotel.
It makes sense that an initiative like this began in Copenhagen, which is one of the more bicycle-friendly European cities. If the program proves successful, it will be extended to all Crowne Plaza hotels in the UK.
The latest news (which I haven’t been able to come across in English; I’m including the Spanish link which was sent to me by Santiago, thanks!) is that the Hotel Resort Royal Palm Plaza in Campinas, Brazil, has built a unique and novel way to heat the hotel’s pool. Once again, taking advantage of the gym, this time by using the heat generated as their guests work out. This is accomplished through six heat pumps that extract energy from the air of the gym, channeling it to heat 1.3 million liters of pool water.
Strangely, I can find no mention of this unique initiative on the hotel’s website, but perhaps they don’t update it that often. This is a truly novel idea that I’d want to share if it were my hotel. I’ve mentioned before the importance of sharing green practices online with potential guests and on site with current guests.
These are great ways to involve guests in helping the hotel provide top services while still being green. And I love the way the Crowne Plaza Hotel gives back to guests by providing them with a meal voucher. I am curious, however, if there’s a maximum per day or per stay. One can only wonder what they’d do if Lance Armstrong showed up at their hotel.
In any case, these are great initiatives that are worth sharing and implementing. What other alternative energy programs have you heard of that involve guest participation?
