The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is setting new environmental standards for the city's hotels and professional organizers.

Ten thousand rooms in 14 days. That is the number of bookings NHG must juggle in the run up to the climate summit in Copenhagen at the end of November 2009. As well as which they will also have to evaluate and prioritise those hotels with the greenest profiles.

Positive results
As part of the hotel booking assignment, NHG has committed to evaluating all Copenhagen hotels according to flexibility, services provided and environmental friendliness. The environmental requirements are in line with those of the Green Key award. Under evaluation will be the hotels' overall environmental strategy; energy usage; water usage; cleaning methods; waste management; usage of organic produce; and their smoking policy.

The survey shows that, so far, more than half of the hotels have achieved at least 75 percent of the green initiatives under evaluation. The Scandic group's hotels have dominated the list with Scandic Sydhavnen and Scandic Copenhagen as top performers. Other high performers include Clarion Hotel Copenhagen and 71 Nyhavn. The most positive outcome of the survey, however, is that it motivates the hotels to improve their environmental considerations.
"Each day we receive updates from hotels that have changed their status in one of the categories," says Trine Steffensen, Project Director COP15. "It will be exiting to see how the results of the survey look in half a year."

Limiting resources is part of the project management
Like all other correspondence, the survey has been carried out electronically in order to save resources. NHG has itself taken the opportunity to implement its own environmental policy. Among other targets, they aim to minimize the use of resources and the amount of waste in their daily operations.
"The summit is generally very motivating for all partners involved," says Trine Steffensen. "Hopefully the trend will continue after November 2009. But with the phrase 'financial crisis' on everybody's lips, it remains to be seen whether the environment will remain a high priority. The challenge is to prove that environmental concerns can lead to short-term financial savings."

Optimal logistics will limit carbon emissions
NHG has established a database to handle all the hotel bookings. When most bookings are made, the Foreign Ministry will use the database to plan the optimal transport logistics to and from the Bella Center in order to save as much carbon emissions from vehicles as possible.

"We therefore hope that as many participants as possible will book their rooms through us. That way we can also optimise transportation," says Trine Steffensen.