Just in time for Earth Day, Starwood Hotels & Resorts announced that all of their Element locations will be LEED Certified. Now I’ve been following the Element development process since it was known as Project ESW and while I was aware that Element was a “green” hotel - I cant recall ever seeing that it was going to be LEED Certified. This is great news! For those unaware of what LEED Certification is - it’s a certification by the Federal Government that states that the building and its services helps the environment and saves energy - there are different levels of LEED Certification and it’s all achieved via the type of and sourcing of building materials, methods in maintaining the property, ways of actually building the property and the types of fixtures used in the property.

Ok - back to the point of this post.

Starwood has even gone so far as to create a website (http://www.greenelementhotels.com) which shows how the brand is being configured and designed for being Green. The site only has a few pages - but describes the thought processes that went into creating Element, has two videos and even a floorplan of a typical room - showing how the green elements are integrated into the layout.

With this announcement, Starwood is becoming the first major hotel chain to require that all of it’s hotels under a specific brand meet LEED Certification. Barry Sternlicht’s 1 Hotel will also be LEED Certified - but the first 1 Hotel isn’t due to open until 2009 at the earliest. Element on the other hand is due to have 20 hotels open by the end of 2009 and around 200 hotels open in the next 5 years or so - each and every one of those hotels will be built with LEED Certification.

The biggest part of the announcement is the one that really no one seems to have noticed.. It states in the news release that Starwood will use Element has a lesson on how to extend LEED certification throughout the other brands and other properties in the Starwood umbrella. It sounds as though Starwood is going to be taking the same steps they did with making Westin non-smoking, then extending that ban to Sheraton & Four Points - although this will be alot harder since you can’t just wake up one morning and put LEED Certification signs throughout the building!

Making a brand LEED Certified is not an easy task and its also not cheap - people have to be trained and processes have to be changed for the certification, plus owners and developers have to be open for the possibility of a longer return on investment due to the cost of the implementation - but becoming LEED Certified will increase the public’s perception of the brand, as well as helping the environment. The public is becoming more and more aware of what LEED certification means, and if they have the choice between a “Green” hotel or a non-green hotel, even if they would have to pay a little more money - I think most would choose a green hotel.

Secondly, its becoming more and more apparent that society as a whole needs to take more care and consideration for how we live today so that the generations in front of us are able to live better than we live today. There will always be grass roots movements for change like this - but in order for it to really make a difference and in order for it to be “respected” initiatives need to be started from the top on down - I’m not just referring to the government, but the places we do business with day in and day out as well.

Starwood will probably run into issues when trying to extend the LEED Certification through their other brands - its not like they can just provide the same type of an item to all of the hotels and that will solve the problem. Each and every building and facility requires different components, and the owners or managers of the facilities will have to go along with the initiative. Ideally, they should welcome it with open arms - it will probably lower their bottom line in the future, end up paying for itself, make them look good, as well as possibly feeling that they have made a difference in the world. The only problem is reality is just not that easy.

It’s a little surprising to see that Starwood is the only major hotel brand that is really taking this initiative and extending it to all of their locations for the Element brand, as well as looking to see how they can extend it to their other brands. It’s my only hope that the other major’s follow in Starwood footsteps - but if the history of Starwood’s initiatives being followed by their competitors are an example - everyone will be lining up.

I’d like to see each and every hotel company attempt to integrate LEED Certification throughout their brands. The new rage over the past few years is to have newly created prototypes, so why can’t they extend the LEED Certification into those prototypes? It’s much easier and cheaper to put LEED Certification into a new-build project than an existing project - but you need to start somewhere!

andrew@alconic-inc.com