If you are planning a meeting at a Hyatt property and would like individual water bottles for your attendees, you must now specifically request them, as the hotel chain has just become the latest to discontinue single-use plastics. For meetings, that means carafes of water or reusable glass bottles are the default option.
Hyatt, which has more than 875 locations in almost 60 countries, had already eliminated plastic straws and drink stirrers. And besides this latest move on water bottles, the effort also includes replacing single-use toiletry bottles with large shampoo, conditioner, and body wash dispensers in guest rooms by 2021. InterContinental Hotel Group and Marriott International have both previously announced they are transitioning to larger toiletry dispensers, with Marriott estimating it will result in 500 million fewer tiny bottles going to landfills each year.
To help guests stay hydrated, Hyatt has committed to increasing the number of water stations in public spaces for guests to fill reusable water bottles. At properties including the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa, Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa, and Hyatt Ziva Cancun, guests are provided with reusable water bottles at check-in.
Eliminating single-use toiletries has become an inevitable step for hotel chains as more states follow California’s lead in proposing environmental legislation that would ban them. But the move also reduces costs for chains, and the savings could be invested to expand waste-reduction programs that many hotels are successfully running in other countries. Hyatt, for example, has in-house water filtration and bottling plants in Asia. The system at the Hyatt Regency Delhi eliminates more than one million plastic bottles each year by providing clean water in branded glass bottles for hotel guests. The chain has a similar system in at least nine other hotels including the Hyatt Regency Addis Ababa, Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo, and Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa. But Hyatt is not the only chain to do this; the JW Marriott in Delhi also filters and bottles water for guests. Since hotels have already moved into the bottling business, easily recycled glass water bottles could be another revenue stream for them, even in the U.S.
For other initiatives that can remove plastics from meetings and events, read How to Punt the Plastics, which features 13 actions the Australian Marine Sciences Association took to eliminate plastics at its annual meeting.
