1. Facility Overview
Located an 8-minute walk from Kyoto Station, "Mercure Kyoto Station" is a city-style hotel featuring a total of 225 guest rooms. Against the backdrop of an exceptionally high international guest ratio—with inbound travelers accounting for approximately 90% of their clientele—the hotel drives unique environmental footprint reduction measures that maximize the use of existing infrastructure equipment, led primarily by the Director of the Lodging Department.
2. Good Practice
By thoroughly analyzing the characteristics of its guest profile, the hotel has achieved "aggressive operations" that reduce resources while maintaining customer satisfaction, alongside "circular food loss countermeasures" that thoroughly eliminate waste.
Power and Water Saving Leveraging Inbound Characteristics: Taking into account the usage habits of international guests, the hotel implements measures such as turning off the default power of heated toilet seats and optimizing guest room air conditioning according to the climate. For shower water flow, they established a unique satisfaction benchmark of "7 liters per minute" and performed precise line-charge adjustments. As a result, they achieved significant energy reductions without generating a single guest complaint.
Food Loss Reduction Compressed to "1/10": In breakfast service, the chef finely adjusts the quantity of menu items provided according to the guest profile (region and nationality) of that specific day. Furthermore, surplus edible portions from the buffet are provided to the staff cafeteria and managed by listing the remaining amounts, which has successfully reduced the volume of waste to approximately one-tenth of conventional levels. This creates a positive cycle that also serves as meal support (giving back) for staff during times of high commodity prices.
3. Challenges
The major challenge now is how to take these sustainable initiatives out of a "silo" (preventing them from depending solely on specific individuals) and root them firmly as a part of the hotel's "culture." To ensure that activities do not grind to a halt even when specific personnel are absent, a "committee system" has been established with leaders selected from each department. However, permeating awareness among all staff members and creating a continuous mechanism remains a work in progress through ongoing trial and error.
4. Message
"Hotels tend to be bound by the equipment installed at the time of opening, but there are many things that can be accomplished depending on operational ingenuity. Particularly at facilities with a high inbound ratio, it is entirely possible to move forward with 'aggressive initiatives' that break free from conventional common sense, while gaining the understanding of our guests. Moving forward, we hope to deepen sustainable management across our entire organization while continuing to share our struggles and insights with other facilities."
