Nobody travels to see a hotel. People come for the place it sits in — the coast, the hills behind it, the town that still knows its neighbours, and whoever pours their coffee in the morning and tells them where to walk. That is what we are really looking after. Keeping it in good shape is not a side project here. It is the same job as running a good hotel.
Heating and lighting a hotel takes a lot of energy, and most of our carbon comes straight from that. So we read the meters at every property every month — not to file a report, but because you cannot cut what you have never counted. We are aiming for 45% less carbon per guest night by 2030, measured against 2019. Getting there is unglamorous: insulation, LED bulbs, heat pumps, better glazing, controls that switch things off in an empty room, and electricity from renewable sources.
Metered at every property and watched per guest night. Low-flow taps and showerheads as standard. If you would rather keep your towels another night, the card in your room means exactly that, and we are grateful. Mostly, though, water is lost to drips nobody got round to reporting, so we go looking for leaks instead of waiting for them.
Use less, use it again, then recycle, in that order. Bins are separated, front of house and back. Single-use plastic is gone from bedrooms, bars and meeting rooms wherever there is something better, which is why you will find refillable bottles in the bathroom instead of a row of miniatures. Food waste gets weighed and talked through properly with the kitchen, because a kitchen that can see the number changes what it does. What is left goes to compost or anaerobic digestion.
We buy Irish, local and in season wherever we can, and we ask suppliers to show their working — properly certified on the things that matter most: fish, coffee, tea, cocoa, paper, timber. There is real food on the menu for people who do not eat meat, cooked with the same care as everything else and not tacked on at the bottom of the page.
None of this happens without the people who work here. Fair pay, safe hours, proper training and a way up for anyone who wants one. Everyone hears about all of the above in their first week, and every hotel has a small group — we call them the Green Team — who keep us honest and can walk straight into the manager’s office.
We hire locally, buy locally and back local causes, and we show up for the community and tourism groups where we operate. We also try to be decent about the everyday things: noise, deliveries, parking and light spilling where it should not.
Anyone can write a page like this. Calusade Hotel Group is part of Fáilte Ireland’s Climate Action Programme, which helps Irish tourism businesses actually measure and cut their emissions, If you are weighing us up for an event or a corporate account and want the paperwork for a given hotel, just ask.
Our Group General Manager looks after this and answers to the board for it. We go through the numbers Monthly and rewrite this page at least once a year. If you think we are falling short, or you have spotted something obvious we have missed, write to [email protected]. We do read it.