March 9, 2011
The St. Regis and the Luxury Collection of Starwood Hotels & Resorts are commemorating Earth Hour 2011 by encouraging their guests to turn off their lights for one hour on March 26 to celebrate the planet and ecofriendly behavior.
The Starwood brand is planning this initiative across all of its brands and is one of the largest companies to participate. It is also giving 100 points to all Starwood Preferred Guests who register at http://www.spg.com/earthhour.
“The focus of this strategy is around creating shared values between the hotels guest and the Starwood brand,” said Ian Chee, strategy and planning director at AKQA, New York. “Starwood demonstrates to current and potential guests that the hotel brand is concerned and cares for the future of the earth.”
Earth Hour is a global environmental awareness event created by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to send a message about the importance of environmental sustainability and caring for the planet.
AKQA is a San Francisco, CA-based advertising agency that helps brands such as Lamborghini develop solutions to drive brand performance. The company is not affiliated with Starwood. Mr. Chee commented as a third-party expert.
Turn out the lights
This is Starwood’s third annual participation in Earth Hour. Its hotel brands are encouraging all of their guests to voluntarily turn off their lights and take other energy-saving measures for one full hour, starting at 8:30 p.m. EST.
Starwood hotels will turn off non-essential interior lighting, use candlelight in restaurants and bars and use in-room voicemail and television messages to inform their guests about Earth Hour.
The hotels will also conduct Earth Hour awareness events, including community walk-a-thons, public candlelight unplugged concerts and guest receptions with green cocktails.
Last year, guests were treated to s’mores by candlelight, chocolate Earth-shaped lollipops and ecofriendly-themed meals.
“On top of the subjective rationale behind a luxury decision, you are adding an objective reason for people to choose your brand [because it prides itself as ecofriendly],” Mr. Chee said.
A sustainable lifestyle
Starwood’s brands have been blazing the trail for other hospitality chains to follow when it comes to environmental stability.
The company launched Element, a hotel brand that mandated all properties pursue the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for high-performance buildings.
Starwood now has 10 certified buildlings of this caliber, including Luxury Collection and St. Regis hotels.
Additionally, Starwood prides itself in its ability to set targets to reduce energy and water consumption by 30 percent in all of its properties by 2020.
Consumers who care about the environment tend to be well-educated and have high-paying jobs, and also are more likely to pay for premium hotels like the St. Regis and the Luxury Collection hotels.
Therefore, these are the perfect customers for Starwood to try to encourage to celebrate Earth Hour.
"People like to see the brands they utilize as a reflection of themselves,” Mr. Chee said. “Given a choice, and with the Web, there is more choice in travel than ever before, an advantage of shared value between people and brand can be a powerful decision-making criteria in a world of options.
“This will certainly add value to Starwood’s premium brands,” he said.
Final Take
Earth Hour 2011 official video
Rachel Lamb is an editorial assistant at Luxury Daily. Reach her at rachel@napean.com.
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