51 Dubai hotels discuss green tourism practices to efficiently manage resources and reduce carbon footprint.
Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing hosted an immersive workshop to provide hotels with a refreshing outlook of its innovative sustainability board game and encourage hospitality stakeholders to enrol their properties in the carbon calculator, to further enhance Dubai’s position as the world’s leading sustainable tourism destination.
The board game and carbon calculator have been created specifically for the hotel industry and serve as integral awareness tools used by the Dubai Sustainable Tourism (DST) initiative, launched by Dubai Tourism to support and encourage hotels to actively drive sustainable tourism practices, efficiently manage their resources, and reduce the collective carbon footprint of Dubai’s tourism industry.
74 hospitality professionals from 51 hotels attended the workshop in addition to representatives from Dubai Municipality who presented the Dubai lamp, the world’s most energy efficient lamp designed by Philips lighting and Dubai Municipality. The industry event held at Zabeel House by Jumeirah, Al Seef was hosted by Tourism Development & Investments at Dubai Tourism.
Yousuf Lootah, executive director, Tourism Development & Investments, Dubai Tourism, explained the mechanics of the board game and highlighted DST’s carbon calculator programme, emphasising the ways in which private sector collaborations can be key to achieving the wider objectives of DST.
He said, “Dubai’s hospitality industry has long been a cornerstone of the city’s economy, recently crossing the 110,000 room threshold. As we look forward to continued capacity expansion and increased visitor volumes in the lead-up to 2020, it is paramount that we continue to implement new and improved measures for Dubai’s fast-evolving tourism and hospitality industry to further reduce excessive consumption and conserve resources, particularly in line with the vision of H H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE vice president and prime minister, and ruler of Dubai, to transform the emirate into one of the world’s leading sustainable tourism destinations.
“As such, we are delighted to see the success of interactive gamification, software and the 12 Steps Towards Sustainability manual published by Dubai Tourism as part of the sustainable tourism initiative to communicate such processes and procedures, resulting in increased information retention levels.”
Ahmad Saeed Al Badwawi, director of applied sustainability and renewable energy department, Dubai Municipality, said: “The applied sustainability and renewable energy department at Dubai Municipality participated with Dubai Sustainable Tourism by presenting Dubai Lamp, the most efficient lamp in the world. The Dubai Lamp Initiative is a unique research resulting in the development of the world’s first commercially available 200 lumen per watt LED lamp, available in widely used shapes and colours. By replacing conventional lamps with Dubai Lamp, households and enterprises can reduce electricity used for lighting by up to 90%. In addition to raising light and energy efficiency to new levels, the Dubai Lamp is also extremely durable with an average lifespan of up to 15 times longer than conventional lamps.”
The board game has been designed to raise awareness of sustainability in a fun and interactive way, allowing participating teams to measure the levels of electricity and water consumption in their establishments, and identify ways in which they can reduce costs. Hotel establishments learn how to efficiently measure and reduce energy through three easy steps, starting with calculating the current consumption per room and isolating areas that are responsible for excessive output, then identifying sustainable solutions and optimising the efficiency of those areas, and finally testing the application of sustainable solutions by calculating how much water and energy can be conserved. More than 630 participants from over 110 hotels have played the board game so far during events and roadshows organised by Dubai Tourism.
Meanwhile, the carbon calculator programme developed by Dubai Tourism in partnership with Dubai Carbon, allows hotels to help establish a benchmark among all hospitality establishments in Dubai and identify various cost saving opportunities.
