Envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion really works in the hotel indus­try – as proven by theBest­West­ern Pre­mier­HotelVic­to­ria, “the world’s most eco-friendly pri­vate hotel”. Since 1985, Bertram and Astrid Späth, as the third gen­er­a­tion, have been man­ag­ing the hotel’s oper­a­tion. In that very year, they ini­ti­ated the in-house envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion project. Both these hote­liers firmly believe that a respon­si­ble man­age­ment of the envi­ron­ment is the pre­req­ui­site for a shared future. “That is why our oper­a­tions com­ply with eco­log­i­cal prin­ci­ples: envi­ron­men­tally con­scious, mod­ern and sus­tain­able,” says Astrid Späth.

  Zero Emis­sions, 100 per­cent Com­fort Zone

Since 2002, the “Vic­to­ria” has been a zero emis­sions estab­lish­ment that uses only renew­able energy. In that year, the tra­di­tional oil heat­ing was exchanged for an energy-efficient wood pel­let heat­ing sys­tem. Com­bined with a solar heat­ing sys­tem (323 sq ft), the new sys­tem saves more than 13,000 gal­lons of heat­ing oil and, as a result, 150 tons of car­bon diox­ide. These sys­tems pro­vide 100 per­cent of the heat required by the hotel for heat­ing and hot water. To cool all 66 rooms of the hotel, a ground water cool­ing sys­tem that uses 50 times less energy than a tra­di­tional air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem was installed in 2007.

 Two years later, the two rear build­ings of the hotel were com­pletely ren­o­vated for 2.7 mil­lion Euros (US$ 3.8 mil­lion). A 9.5 inch thick heat insu­la­tion around both build­ings guar­an­tees a future sav­ings of 60 per­cent. In the sum­mer of 2010, the rooms of the his­toric 1875 hotel were ren­o­vated for a total of € 300,000 (US$ 420,000). All rooms and hall­ways have since been equipped with LED or energy-saving light bulbs. Duvets and bed linens are made fro­mOeko­Tex­ma­te­ri­als. Dur­ing the course of the ren­o­va­tion, the 1999 solar heat­ing sys­tem was also expanded and aug­mented with a small wind power plant (2kW). The new pho­to­voltaic sys­tem pro­vides 21 kW of power. Fur­ther­more, the hotel has an own­er­ship share in the wind energy park in Etten­heim. This own­er­ship share yields 70,000 kWh of energy pro­duc­tion. All in all, 50 per­cent of the hotel’s energy require­ments are cov­ered by its own solar and wind power systems.

 In order to cre­ate a pos­i­tive effect on the city’s cli­mate and to increase the impact of the solar sys­tem, green­ery was planted on all roofs. One ben­e­fit of this was the result­ing ‘com­fort zone’ for hotel guests. They can expect all the con­ve­niences of a four-star hotel dur­ing their stay.

 This envi­ron­men­tal project has had a pos­i­tive effect – about 56 per­cent of guests make reser­va­tions because of the hotel’s exem­plary eco-friendly mea­sures. The Hotel Victoria’s project demon­strates that even in the hotel busi­ness green tech­nolo­gies are the tech­nolo­gies of the future.

 Anna-Lena Zehen­der will con­tinue to report about fur­ther details.