CHA makes green call to St. Kitts & Nevis’s hotels

The Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) appealed to mom-and-pop hotels and other tourism-oriented properties in St. Kitts & Nevis to join the environmental management program in order to score big savings

Jeannelle Blanchard, regional ccordinator of the Caribbean Hotel Environmental Management Initiative (CHEMI), is in charge of publicizing the program’s benefits that brief hotels, inns, villas and apartments on how to save water, power and other materials that eventually lead to less operational costs.

CHEMI is a courtesy of CAST, the environmental branch of CHA, implemented with the help of the PA Consulting Group and bankrolled by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The process is carried out through a series of charge-free environmental inspections. “What we’ve found out is that environmental management is in fact a highly effective tool to slash costs,” Mrs. Blanchard pointed out. “We’ve also ferreted out that around 10 to 20 percent of operational costs in many small hotels are usually linked to supplies. The environmental management program we’re spearheading is precisely bent on reducing supply intake.”

“There’s an important additional benefit,” she added “for participating properties because they can use their much greener behavior as a marketing tool that really sells good. More and more travelers are inclined to staying in facilities that take good care of their own environment and of the entire destination. That’s the case of the European market where three quarters of tourists are interested in staying in green facilities,” she concluded.