Hotel Staff ‘Roll Sleeves Up’ For The Environment

Hotel Staff ‘Roll Sleeves Up’ For The Environment

Management and staff at Queenstown’s largest hotel will be rolling up their sleeves for the environment this coming Thursday (April 22).

Volunteers from Novotel Queenstown Lakeside will be joined by volunteers from three other Queenstown Accor properties – Mercure Queenstown Resort, Hotel St Moritz and Sofitel Queenstown – to give the town’s One Mile Creek a facelift in recognition of the hotel group’s Earth Guest Day.

They will be cleaning the creek of rubbish and wilding pines, and hope to cover at least 1km of both sides of the waterway between 2pm and 4pm. The volunteers will also be planting mountain beech trees near the creek as recommended by Briana O'Brien, District Forester for Queenstown Lakes District Council.

Earth Guest Day is a global activity developed by the Accor hotel group as part of its commitment to the principles of environmental and social responsibility, and to increase awareness of Accor’s commitment to a worldwide day for Sustainable Development.

This year’s theme is bio-diversity, and each hotel around the globe gets to choose what they wish to do in their area.

Earth Guest Day is being used to help launch Plant for the Planet, where groups of Accor hotels get involved in a project to restore native habitats. As well as planting trees at One Mile Creek, Novotel Queenstown Lakeside will plant more than 60 native species in the hotel grounds, which are bounded on one side by Horne Creek and on another by the crystal clear waters of Lake Wakatipu.

It’s not just hotel staff and management who will be getting their hands dirty -- hotel guests will be invited to participate and plant a tree, for which they will receive a certificate and photo of ‘their’ tree.

Novotel Queenstown Lakeside General Manager Jim Moore said Earth Guest Day was now in its fourth year and staff were always keen to take part and give something back to their local community and the planet.

“We encourage all our staff to take part and it’s pleasing to see how many of them embrace this initiative,” he said.

“The idea behind Earth Guest Day is that we are all guests of the earth and should take time out to give back to the planet. Our hotel sits in such a glorious location on the edge of this beautiful lake that we couldn’t help but do our ‘bit’ to clean up the waterways and plant a few more native trees to help restore this natural habitat.

”The tree planting programme is testament to our long-term commitment to this town and our region.”

Now in its fourth year, the sustainable development programme is supported in 69 countries and focuses on both people (support for charities such as Cure Kids) and the environment (eco projects to control energy use, limit water consumption, manage waste and preserve biodiversity).

ENDS

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