Passage House Hotel brings home bronze award

The Olympics might be over, but one local hotel is celebrating receiving a bronze award from the Green Tourism Business Scheme.

The Best Western Passage House Hotel, in Kingsteignton, received the award after putting in place a package of measures to achieve the rating from the scheme, which has been running since 1997 and is the largest and most established scheme of its type in the world.

“It was a lot of hard work, but we are really proud of it. We are very aware of our responsibilities to this beautiful area and so becoming more environmentally friendly is part of our commitment to the local community,” says Carley Warren, sales and marketing manager for the hotel.

Although the hotel had many environmentally friendly measures already in place, such as all the boilers being compliant with the standards required, they also had to involve the staff for many of the other categories they were assessed on.

“Everyone had to get on board with putting new procedures in place, such as recycling paper and cardboard, as well as cutting down on food waste. ‘Green training’ is part of our employment process now as well, which includes a questionnaire to find out how environmentally aware our staff are,” Carley says.

“Our housekeeping manager, Victoria Boseley, really went to town and changed all the products we use to cut down on waste and excess chemical usage. She’s been a real inspiration.”

The location of the Best Western Passage House Hotel, on the banks of the river Teign, means that the staff see first hand how important - and fragile - environmental ecosystems are and Carley says the hotel is determined to improve its green credentials by going for gold at their next assessment in two years time.

“We are now working hard to meet all the requirements of the scheme to get the gold award and will be doing things such as creating a proper a wildlife garden area, to encourage bees and other wildlife to come along,” she says. “It’s become a real passion for everyone here.”