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Sustainability Consulting
Corsendonk Turnova - Certification Guidance
A returning customer is a happy customer!
After a successful certification guidance project at Corsendonk Hooge Heyde, Ecotel Consultancy continued to be the #1 partner in sustainability of Corsendonk Hotels & Clubs. This time, we guided the luxurious 4* hotel Turnova in their sustainable practices. Similar to the other project for this hotel chain, the end goal was to achieve the prestigious Green Key which is the most well-known ecolabel in the Belgian hospitality landscape.
This new 97-room hotel in Turnhout, Belgium already did significant efforts to be sustainable such as installing a thermal wheel, a geothermal heat pump, green roofs and more but they were set on improving themselves even more. That is why we individually reviewed every department of the hotel and looked for sustainable solutions that were efficient, cost-effective and even cost-saving.
In the Food & Beverage department for example, we identified food waste during breakfast that could be avoided without affecting the guest. By preparing the food based on the room occupancy, the hotel could lower their food cost per person and achieve noteworthy savings while maintaining the same high quality. Furthermore, the hotel had to lower their use of single-use plastics (e.g. butter, honey, sugar…) and replace them with a more sustainable alternative. In this respect, Ecotel Consultancy always provides several alternatives by carefully handpicking partners that offer sustainable products for a good price.
Do you also need help achieving an ecolabel? Click here!
Corsendonk Hooge Heyde - Certification Guidance
At the end of 2021, we worked together with Corsendonk Hotels & Clubs for a Green Key certification guidance at Corsendonk Hooge Heyde – a beautiful 3* hotel with 38 rooms and 4 meeting rooms situated in a beautiful, green environment. This Belgian hotel chain has 4 hotels in the province of Antwerp and 1 hotel at the Belgian coast. Next to that, they also offer furnished apartments in Turnhout and Blankenberge.
In the intake talk with the hotel, Jan-Felix Nédée, COO at Corsendonk Hotels, and Tom Dresselaers, CFO at Corsendonk Hotels, mentioned the following: “We tried to get certified with a Green Key 3 years ago but it was too time-consuming for us to check all the criteria ourselves. However, we are a well-known meeting and event location and a lot of corporate clients are asking about our efforts towards the environment so we really want to get certified now.”.
Certification with an ecolabel gives the hotel a proof of quality of the sustainable practices they implement and attracts and convinces these business clients to choose Corsendonk Hooge Heyde for their meetings and seminars. Therefore, the consultants of Ecotel Consultancy visited the hotel, checked the compliance of the hotel with the 180+ criteria of the Green Key and made a personalized action plan for further improvement. During the project, we had the pleasure to work together and follow up on the action plan with Simona Strakayova, the general manager of Corsendonk Hooge Heyde who was also appointed as the environmental manager.
After our guidance at the hotel, an external auditor of Green Key reviewed our work and a few weeks later, Corsendonk Hooge Heyde officially received their Green Key!
Want to know more about our certification guidance? Click here!
Ghent University - Guest Lecture
In September 2021 and 2022, we were asked to give a guest lecture to inspire 2nd Master Business Engineering students about entrepreneurship in the course Technology Entrepreneurship at Ghent University, taught by professor Johan Verrue. In this course, the students are challenged to come up with a viable business idea and corresponding financial plan.
As the founders of Ecotel Consultancy, we gave the students insights about the journey of our business in the hotel industry and the steps we took to be where we are today. For us, it was crucial to understand the market: what do our clients need and how can we help them in the best possible way to bring value on the table for them? Next to that, networking and learning about current trends and how the industry is structured proved to be very valuable as well. But the most important tip we gave the students is that their business is only viable if they are passionate about it, just like we are about sustainability and the hospitality industry.
Are you also looking for an exciting talk on sustainability? Contact us!