Global Hyatt Corporation

The challenges facing our global environment have never been greater. The hospitality industry recognises that hotels, however small, place a burden on the environment through their consumption of energy and water, the waste they produce and the emissions, both direct and indirect, that result from their daily operations.

Global Hyatt Corporation is committed to reducing the impact that its operations have on the environment through a dedicated strategy that encourages technical innovation, employee engagement and commitment, the responsible consumption of resources and the reduction of waste and emissions.

The results of this commitment are visible across the 365 properties that Hyatt operates worldwide, where Global Hyatt is dedicated to designing, building and managing innovative hotels that provide guests with authentic and comfortable accommodation that respect the natural environment and the local communities in which they operate.

Action in Dubai

One of Hyatt’s most successful and innovative sustainability projects to date can be found in the 674-room Grand Hyatt Dubai. With the United Arab Emirates’ carbon footprint spiralling to be the second highest in the world, and the cost of energy and water escalating annually, the property took the initiative to find alternative ways to reduce its impact on the environment and to combat these increasing costs.

In September of 2007, the Grand Hyatt Dubai made the revolutionary decision to convert its main water heating system from diesel oil-fired to solar powered. The installation was the first of its kind in the UAE and is also one of the largest of installations in the whole of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Set up on the roof of the Grand Cineplex, the solar panels use vacuum tube technology, which allows the whole plant to produce between 800 to 1,000 kilowatts of energy per hour. With the cost of diesel almost triple what it was eight years ago, the solar plant is expected to pay for itself in just three years.

Saving water

Dubai’s dry, subtropical climate and limited annual rainfall poses additional challenges to the environment as the city’s exponential growth strains the areas limited water supplies. To reduce its consumption of water, the Grand Hyatt Dubai has implemented several innovative programmes that together save millions of gallons of water every month.

One of the largest sources of water consumption for Grand Hyatt Dubai are its cooling towers, which are critical to maintaining comfortable temperatures, especially during the hot and humid summer months. To conserve fresh water, the hotel puts its effluent through an intensive purification and reverses osmosis system, and then re-uses this water for the cooling towers. The cost of treating this water is a fraction of the cost of introducing fresh water into the towers, but more importantly, the technology saves more than 800,000 gallons of drinking water per week.

The Grand Hyatt Dubai also saves an additional 30,000 gallons of water a day by capturing and recycling the water condensate from its air-conditioning units. This was achieved by installing a piping system that transports the cold water to storage tanks, where it is sterilised to remove airborne bacteria and is then pumped back into the cooling towers. This process not only saves water, but it improves the efficiency of the hotels chillers, thereby reducing excess energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Hyatt believes that genuine stewardship of the environment is a shared responsibility and is passionately committed to educating and enlisting the participation of its employees through programmes that increase awareness and knowledge, and by encouraging employees to drive change at a local level.

Through ongoing initiatives worldwide, Global Hyatt has become a corporate pioneer for sustainability.

W: www.hyatt.com