As part of its recent partnership with world water charity Just a Drop, Radisson Blu enlisted guests in a very real way to understand the struggle people in developing countries have to find clean water every day.
The hotel chain has signed an agreement with the charity to provide clean, drinkable water for life to 12,000 children in developing countries where clean water is hard to come by.
The estimated number of people without access to drinking water is 768 million and according to Just a Drop, one child dies every 20 seconds from a water-related disease.
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As part of radisson Blu's commitment, hotels across MENA and Europe invited guests to carry large ‘jerry cans’ of water for 10m. Over the course of three days, guests carried the cans total of 1,310 km, resulting in donations for 1310 children.
Inge Huijbrechts, VP, responsible business, comments, “Hotels use a vast amount of water in the course of their daily business and it is a fine balancing act between guest comfort and running a business responsibly.
“The Walk for Water events were a huge success where both our guests and staff participated whole-heartedly. It was a fun, engaging and educational activity to raise awareness around water sustainability, and celebrate our partnership with Just a Drop.”
The partnership with the charity marks the launch of the group's Blu Planet towel re-use programme. A towel re-use programme is hardly innovative -- all guests anticipate the little sign in hotels advising us to reuse their towels, and no matter how cleverly-worded they are, they say the same thing.
But Radisson Blu decided to go one step further: for every towel that’s reused, they’ll make a donation to Just a Drop. The donation may be miniscule, but over the quarter, they add up considerably.
The website Economically Sound estimates that a 150-room hotel can save 72,000 gallons of water and 480 gallons of detergent per year by operating a towel re-use programme.
The countries benefitting from Radisson Blu's donations to Just a Drop are Peru, Kenya and India.
The hotel group is involved in many more water conservation efforts and research into guest behaviour as part of its Blu Planet programme.
Just a Drop is a UK-based charity with a small team whose mission is to provide clean, drinkable water to those who need it. The non-profit delivers water infrastructure, education and hygiene practices to communities throughout the developing world. The organisation was founded in 1989 by Fiona Jeffery, OBE
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