Sustainability interview: Martin Baeuerle

German national Martin Bäuerle has been in Doha since 2012, at the time moving to Qatar with the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group. In 2014, he left the hotelier world to become a “specialist”, focusing on sustainability for hotels.

Bäuerle reveals where it all began: “In 2008, I became a responsible business trainer with Carlson Rezidor, working with the staff within the hotel on sustainability issues. I worked in Switzerland for five years which is very advanced when it comes to sustainability.”

Bäuerle continues: “I reached a point where working only in hotels did not fulfil me. So I moved out of hospitality and took a break for two months. But I was not finished with Doha, so I came back and started MB Hospitality.”

And while he was already a part of the Green Hotel Interest Group (GHIG) in Qatar, which is a part of the Qatar Green Building Council (QGBC), he soon took over as chairman of GHIG, and now works closely with hotel operators, owners, authorities and other institutions to increase the level of sustainability within Qatar’s hospitality sector.

“Since then we have grown. Until 2014, we had three to four hotels who met on a regular basis. Right now, we are more than 15,” he adds.

Since 2015, he has been working with the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) on sustainability issues. A year ago, a survey was conducted with QGBC and QTA among hotels to find out what level of activity was already ongoing on a sustainable level. Bäuerle reveals that when the results came back, approximately 40% said they are currently carrying out training or education sessions with their staff on this front.

Following that, some of the criteria included in the survey now form part of the new hotel classification system from QTA. “I am working with the QTA right now for the classification system; we have been involved with the planning phase of the classification system for the environmental criteria. And I’m also working closely with the hotels right now for implementing them,” adds Bäuerle.

The new hotel grading and classification system was announced in January 2016, which was first piloted on Katara Hospitality projects last year.

For the first time, hotels are set to be evaluated based on their environmental sustainability management. Hotels that do not make the needed improvements, or chose not to, will then be re-graded — this could involve them losing a star, QTA said in a statement.

Hotels that need to make extensive structural changes, which involve working on more than 40% of their infrastructure, will be given until December 31, 2020 to complete the changes before they are regraded by the QTA.

Bäuerle highlights some of the new elements of the new grading system. “There are minimum criteria that hotels have to hit, there’s no way around it. One is that the hotels have to measure their energy consumption, waste and water. A lot of hotels don’t know how much waste they are producing,” Bäuerle reveals.

Minimum scores have also been set to achieve certain rankings. Out of a total of 400 points, hotels need to pass 320 points to rank as a five-star, for example. Out of this, environmental criteria can gain a property 60 points.

“One big part of the 60 points related to the environment is international certifications. According to this, hotels need to be LEED-certified or equivalent. And then there are also international certifications like Green Key, Green Globe, and Earth Check.

“Hotels can earn up to 20 points if they have two certifications: LEED and one international, which is very valuable,” says Bäuerle.

He points out that it’s not just the value of the rating, but gaining certifications can result in profitability. The news of being certified can be used in the hotel’s marketing to gain eco-conscious guests’ favour, and also for improving operational efficiencies and so on.

To make it easier for Qatar’s hotels to gain the international certification, QGBC is in the process of becoming the national operator for Green Key. Since Green Key operates out of Denmark, to currently be certified by them, you have to belong to a larger hotel chain with an existing agreement with Green Key. But that’s set to change once QGBC is authorised as the national operator. Right now, just one hotel in Qatar has the Green Key certification: the W Doha.

Bäuerle calls the W Doha “one of the leading hotels in Qatar” when it comes to sustainability, which is now Green Key-certified for the third time. He also cites the Mövenpick Hotel West Bay Doha as being worthy of praise.

He says: “Definitely the Mövenpick Hotel West Bay Doha is one of the leading hotels with this. It’s certified right now with Green Globe, for example. It helps if you have a strong leader like Ghada (Sadek, the general manager) who is passionate about it and brings it to higher levels than just a certification.” He also mentions the Grand Hyatt Doha and the Hilton Doha as being involved in green issues.

He says education is the biggest challenge in getting others to pitch in, and it also has to come from the top management.

Bäuerle says: “You can’t go in and tell people what to do if the top is not following the same. However, there’s no point in educating the staff if you don’t provide the right materials or you don’t provide the right facilities.”

But it’s working. Hoteliers in Qatar are apparently now calling for more facilities related to waste management.

The authorities are also on-board and with its latest surveys wants to understand how much waste the hospitality industry is producing, in order to look at what added facilities are needed.

Another challenge is that even if hotels are willing to recycle, Bäuerle says, the costs related are easily three to five times more than what they spend currently, which makes it a tough sell.

But there’s more to sustainability than “going green”, says Bäuerle. “Of course, the environment is one part but you have to talk about people and community outreach. When it comes to this, hotels are already doing quite a lot.”

He says: “One trend which is now gaining traction is to focus on people with special needs and accessibility. All these figures are part of the classification system, so hotels have to provide access in public areas for the physically challenged, the elevators have to have voice information about the level in Arabic and English, elevators have to have Braille language, and when it comes to the mentally challenged, the staff should be trained in handling people with special needs.” Bäuerle also adds that he is currently trying to kickstart talks with an institution to provide training to Qatar’s hotel industry related to how to treat people with special needs.

There’s certainly a lot on Bäuerle’s plate, and he says that his aim is to create more awareness related to sustainability. “A lot of people say that if you’re going green, it costs a lot of money. Whereas I’m try to show them that in the initial stage it may cost some money, but you will get a return of investment with savings,” he says.

Bäuerle adds: “Especially right now in the current economic situation where people are trying to reduce operational costs… if they would have implemented environmental management systems earlier, they would already be in a stage where they could start saving. Currently it’s difficult to approach them because they are not spending anything.”

And Bäuerle’s aim with the GHIG is to have more members with mandatory practices associated with the membership.

“Currently we meet every two months and we share best practice. My aim is to have the hotels more aligned — let’s collect energy or water figures, let’s create our own benchmark, let’s create our own awards to say which ones are the best performing when it comes to environment issues. Let’s participate in carbon footprint initiatives,” he says.

On that note, Bäuerle has just reached out to International Tourism Partnership, which has created an online CO2 footprint tool where people can find out how much CO2 a hotel is producing. Qatar currently has no data associated with it, something that Bäuerle is looking to change.

His long-term goal is to have more hotels Green Key-certified in Qatar. “It’s set at 20 hotels in the next three years but my personal goal is for it to be 20 hotels in the next year. It helps the QTA, it helps the hotels, and helps the country in general to be more sustainable. That is the vision of QTA, that Qatar will be a sustainable tourism destination.”

Bäuerle concludes: “That’s what sustainability is about — to think about the future and not just today and tomorrow.”