Case study: Kempinski MOE's green team

Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates’ recent LEED Silver certification makes it the first hotel in the region to meet the organisation’s criteria. Hotelier finds out the changes the hotel implemented and future plans

n September this year, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates became the first hotel in the Middle East to obtain the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification for green practices.

LEED consists of a group of rating systems for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings, homes and neighbourhoods. Over the course of 12 months, the hotel worked in partnership with Johnson Controls to make several changes across various departments to achieve the LEED certification from the Green Building Certification Institute.

Rational and Objective
“Kempinski is moving more and more in an environmentally friendly direction. We really try to take care of the environment wherever we enter worldwide. We now have 82 hotels worldwide and more and more hotels, especially the new ones entering into our portfolio, try as much as possible to be environmentally friendly,” says Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates general manager Konstantin Zeuke.

The LEED certificate complements Kempinski’s renewable energy policy (KREEN), which was created by the hotel group to address the challenge of optimising the hotels’ energy efficiency.

“Kempinski focuses quite strongly on green initiatives, that’s why we also have this company internally that is taking charge of all hotels and bringing them in this green direction and there are lots of areas that still have to be looked into because we have hotels from the 19th century until today,” explains Zeuke.

Concept and Investment
The hotel began preparing for the certification at the end of 2011, with Johnson Controls (JCI) acting as the facilitator for the certification.

Before recommending any changes, Johnson Controls, along with the Kempinski staff, conducted LEED gap analysis to know where the hotel stood and the way forward. This helped them chalk out a plan for future actions and work with the building staff and contractors to draft sustainable policies, programmes, and plans.

“We got all the prerequisites that needed to be met. We identified all the areas where we needed to improve and incorporated various energy saving programmes,” explains technical director Jayakumar R Pillai.

The hotel had to meet stringent criteria across five major categories: sustainable site development, water saving, energy efficiency, materials selection, and quality of the indoor environment. Points were then awarded based on energy efficient practices in each category.

“Initially I was aiming that we should at least get the bronze certification, but we got silver because we met more than 50 points. In the range of 40-49 comes the bronze, 50-59 comes silver. So we are lucky that we got silver with our efforts,” he explains.

In Practice
The hotel has continued implementing the green practices it had introduced in the run up to the LEED certification.

“All the policies, all the materials specified, we are using only those — we cannot change from that or else we’ll lose the credibility. For example housekeeping — they had to adopt all the materials as per the green policies recommended by the institute.

Same with the laundry, accounts, the purchasing policies, HR — we have changed the staff transportation; we do not give individual cars, we have a mass transportation system like buses for staff,” explains Pillai.

“We have state-of-the-art systems in the building, we have LEDs installed in all the guest rooms, we have various other things like water saving measures incorporated,” he adds.

Results to Date
The environmentally friendly policies have been received well by hotel guests and it is something more clients are looking for explains Zeuke. “More and more guests are booking green hotels; they look on the website whether it’s a green oriented hotel or not,” he states.

Looking to the future, Pillai and his team are now working towards enhancing the sustainable measures at the hotel. The team will soon begin work on introducing solar panels for heating water, a practice that is already successfully implemented at a sister property in Ajman.

The hotel will also continue replacing the remaining bulbs with LEDs in the hotel and public areas in a bid to achieve a LEED Gold certification.

“We are the first hotel in the MENA region to get the certification and so we become a role model, not only for the hotels in the Kempinksi chain, but other hotels around the world. This is something that we cannot lose out on so we have to continue maintaining this standard,” says Pillai.

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Jayakumar R Pillat
Technical director, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates

In addition to the many changes implemented at the hotel, technical director Jayakumar Pillai also offered guests an option to do their bit to add to the hotel’s sustainable practices. The hotel invested in Eco Smart systems with multiple energy saving modes to allow guests to pick high levels of energy saving.

“Through Eco Smart, we have a green button, where if a guest wants to have more savings, they can press that. Eco Smart is a system in the room — when the guest is not in the room, it adjusts the energy levels to a saving mode.

Guests who are interested in higher savings can press the green button, which will save us more energy. It is above and beyond what the hotel has already set as its level,” explains Pillai.

The system’s inbuilt recovery technology is what makes the real difference, says Pillai. “Normally, when the guest goes out, there is a preset mode where the temperature increases by five degrees, whereas in this system, we have something called recovery technology. Depending on the temperature outside, it can go above five degrees and give us more savings. We are the only hotel in the region to have this system now,” he adds.

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Pamini Hemaprabha
Executive housekeeper, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates

The housekeeping department underwent some major changes in the run up to the LEED silver certification.

“One of the main changes is that we have now moved into green products by using Pure Eco chemicals. In the laundry, the recycled water is used with our eco chemicals for washing operations. We have also implemented better dosing systems to ensure minimum water consumption without compromising on quality,” explains executive housekeeper Pamini Hemaprabha.

“In all the rooms we use Kempinski trees. Guests are encouraged to use them so that their linen will not be changed on a daily basis. Garbage segregation is another system, which is followed systematically,” she adds.

“The department also continues to train staff on eco-friendly practices. Eco initiatives are not fully incorporated after only one training; it needs to be done on an ongoing basis to keep reminding ourselves of the importance of following these initiatives so that we achieve green targets. We developed an extensive training programme through which we educated and motivated our colleagues,” says Hemprabha.

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Samer Tabbara
Regional business manager, Johnson Controls

As LEED facilitators, Johnson Controls’ role was to guide the hotel’s operation team through the LEED process, exploring alternative means of meeting the objectives of the building owner, budget constraints, and LEED requirements, explains Samer Tabbara, regional business manager of Johnson Controls.

“During the process, JCI implemented and developed the complete project plan for achieving the credits and prepared the full LEED documentation package for submission to LEED online.

Through JCI, Kempinski has implemented programmes that increased occupants’ interest and involvement in environmental aspects of building operation and demonstrated a 88.58% reduction in single occupancy commuting by using alternative transportation. Through the commuting programme developed by JCI, Kempinski was able to achieve 15/15 points,” he says.

“JCI also documented existing sustainable practices at the building and coordinated the development of new green initiatives and protocols — all meeting LEED credit thresholds,” he adds.