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8 Steps To Score New Business Through College Forums, Message Boards and Alumni Associations

The Tupperware Guy

Courtesy of Tom Costello – iGroupAdvisors

I have two sons who are involved in college athletics and I spend a great deal of time traveling on the weekends to catch their home or road games.

I am also a subscriber to each of their university’s forums or message boards that allows me to get the latest news about their teams in between games.

It is amazing how much traffic and conversation is generated in these social communities and if you are a hotel sales manager, you should consider how these forums and boards can be a great source of new business for your hotel.

At the Division I level there are typically twelve games on the schedule….six home games and six road games. 

Depending on the size of the institution, the popularity of the program, their opponents, and where the games will be played, the traveling audience can be sizable.

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Guest Engagement Can Help Improve Revenue at Your Hotel

Hospitality Technology

Guest engagement is a long unsolved puzzle for many hoteliers, and like shifting sand, the options to engage potential guests and stay connected with old ones keeps changing. No hotel can afford to rely only on conventional advertising and so, need to seriously consider social media options like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Social Bookmarking, document and picture sharing sites, Pintrest and the like.These social media platforms are cost effective as they are free and allow a hotel property to boast of their fantastic assets and facilities. These platforms allow hotels to actively seek, feedback and recommendations from their guests.

Talking to guests’ helps hotels increase accessibility and market reach, as lots of guests begin planning a holiday or business trip by seeking advice on social media channels. An online survey shows that 29% of travelers seek information from Search Engine Marketing (SEM), 28% seeking information from email marketing…

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Free Top 8 Worlds Best Environmentally Responsible iPhone apps

On this Earth Day Celebration and as the eco green environmental understanding continues to grow, there are more and more people interested in what apps are available that can add eco value to their understandings and tracking. Here is a list of some of the best apps that you can have on your iphone. Join us at The Natural Room and download these great apps. www.thenaturalroom.com.au

Earth Hour 60+

In 2007, 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses across the country turned their lights off for one hour in Sydney, Australia. all joined together to take a stand against climate change. In 2010 a record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action. This app helps takes the positive actions of Earth Hour beyond that one hour to all year, by making it easy for you to make and share your planet-saving efforts, while rewarding you for everything you do to help.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/earth-hour-trainer/id307933189

Tree Hugger

TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. Partial to a modern aesthetic, we strive to be a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/treehugger/id357567546

iCarbonCalc

iCarbonCalc is an iPhone/iPod/iPad application from PE INTERNATIONAL,

the Experts in Sustainability. It helps you to determine your contribution to global warming. Professional result diagrams and charts based on proofed datasets help you to understand the composition of your carbon footprint and to identify potential carbon savings.

Define your personal target values and let the climate benefit!

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/icarboncalc/id350343811

Recycling Tips and News

Regularly updated Recycling News and Tips from various sources. Learn how you can be adopt green living in your lifestyle.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/recycling-tips-and-news/id417262851

Skeptical Science

Skeptical Science is now available as a free app for the iPhone or iPod. You can now use an iPhone or iPad to view the entire list of skeptic arguments as well as (more importantly) readily access what the science says on each argument.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/skeptical-science/id353938484

Yoink!

Find free stuff around you, wherever you go! Using the camera and GPS, giving something away is a snap. Yoink is available free from the app store and we think people who use it are pretty cool.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/yoink/id349889149

Ecoki

The Ecoki Reader brings you the best in sustainable lifestyle news, tips, vegan recipes, and hands on reviews.

Sit back with a cup of green tea and the Ecoki Reader and enjoy the best eco news delivered to you daily.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/ecoki/id329363855

My Water Diary

‘My Water Diary’ is brought to you by the Free Radicals as part of Water Amnesty project.

• Track your water usage over a week and aim to reduce your consumption.

Water is precious. It is a finite resource that is likely to become scarcer in the future. It is something we cannot live without and we are using more of it than ever before. We use it for drinking, cooking and washing but even more water is used to produce things we use everyday like food, paper and even the clothes we wear.

Each day and every day we use about 150 litres of water, a consumption rate which is not sustainable in the long term.

Unless we take action now, climate change, population growth and increased water demand mean that the UK could face a big problem in the future.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-water-diary/id333197878

www.thenaturalroom.com.au

Luxury Goes Green At New York Palace Hotel

 The terms “luxury” and “eco-friendly ” don’t always go hand in hand. It’s unfortunate, because the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, the New York Palace Hotel is proving that, when the two come together, it can be a beautiful thing. The Palace has never been shy about its philosophies; from their high-efficiency lighting to free-range egg breakfasts, the hotel has consistently been at the forefront of the sustainability movement. To this day, it is one of the few New York hotels with a full-time green practices manager on staff. But why stop there? This year, hotel management plans to expand its green initiatives even further. As of January 1st, the New York Palace is the biggest hotel in the city to operate entirely on green energy. “We are committed to promoting sustainability in all areas of hotel management, and using green energy while reducing our property footprint is meaningful not just to our team but also to many of our guests,” said Palace general manager Edward A. Mady in the hotel’s press release . Through offsets and a new power model, the hotel expects to save 22 metric tons of carbon monoxide emissions—the equivalent of taking 4,142 cars off the road. The hotel has also partnered with Clean the World, a non-profit organization dedicated to distributing hygiene products to people in need, and plans to donate up to 500 lbs of “gently-used” soap and other amenities to the group every month. For eco-savvy executives, The Palace also has plans to expand into the green business world with a Green Meetings program. Specially developed by the hotel’s Green Team, the program will include all-electronic sales materials, non-plastic refreshment containers, and complimentary recycling of all non-confidential materials after meetings.

Read full story at: http://www.execdigital.com/sectors/recycling/luxury-goes-green-new-york-palace-hotel

 Source: Execdigital.com

www.twitter.com/greenhotelnews

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200,000 premature deaths in UK due to Air pollution

Campaigners urge health secretary Andrew Lansley to act to reduce air pollution, as government medical experts warn of its ‘significant’ health burden

Long-term exposure to particulate pollution, largely from road traffic, is shortening the lives of as many as 200,000 every year, according to a government advisory committee.

The UK has repeatedly failed to meet EU air pollution targets over the decades with more than 20 towns and cities found to be emitting pollution at twice the WHO limits. Of particular concern are dusts, sulphates and nitrates from road traffic and other sources, known as particulate matter.

These small particles can be carcinogenic and are able to pass through the lungs into the bloodstream, causing inflammation and other more serious conditions. Twice as many people today suffer from lung disease and asthmatic conditions caused by air pollution than did 20 years ago.

Studying data from 2008, the independent Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) estimated that completely removing particulate pollution would have added six months to the life expectancy of every new birth in the UK that year.

While citing the premature deaths figure, the Committee said the best description of the burden was probably in terms of ‘years of total survival time lost to the current population’. For 2008, this would have been 340,000 years across the UK.

Air quality campaigners have been fighting hard for the government to publish annual statistics on the premature deaths from air pollution and accuse officials of underestimating the health impacts.

James Grugeon, from Environmental Protection UK, said the latest figures were ‘unequivocal’ about the massive impact that air pollution has on the health of the UK public. Simon Birkett, who has long-campaigned for action to clean-up London’s air pollution, said officials now had little excuse not to act given the statistical evidence of the health burden.

‘For the first time we can compare easily the health impact of long-term exposure to dangerous airborne particles with the Government’s estimates for the number of premature deaths attributable to alcoholism (15,000 to 20,000 in England), obesity (9,000 in England) and smoking (87,000 in England) and understand the complexities of these metrics,’ he said.

Both Defra and the Department for Health responded to the Committee findings saying they recognised the impact poor air quality was having on public health. However, they have been accused by campaigners of ‘inertia’ in dealing with the issue.

The UK faces a £300 million fine for failing to meet new EU targets for reducing air pollution and has desperately sought to delay its deadlines. The Department for Health insisted it was ‘committed to working towards full compliance with EU air quality standards’.

Useful links
The Mortality Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Particulate Air Pollution in the UK

Source: http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/701026/air_pollution_linked_to_200000_premature_deaths_in_uk.html

In southern Italy, caves become luxury hotels

In the city of Matera, deep in southern Italy’s Basilicata region, ancient caves that once were home to the poor are transformed into offbeat, luxury hotels.

It was early evening in Matera, a city in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, and swallows circled the sky, their melodious calls interrupted only by the clanking of bells worn by cows drinking from a stream deep within a canyon.

On the other side of the canyon was old Matera, an area so ancient that it was used to portray Judea in Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ." Often called the Sassi (which means stone), or the City of Stone, this part of Matera is a maze of caves, churches – some dating back to Roman times – zigzagging steps and stone facades carved from a massive slope of yellowed tufa.

Just after my family and I checked into a new hotel called Sextantio Albergo Diffuso Le Grotte Della Civita, we noticed an elderly couple climbing the hotel’s worn stone stairs. The pair, dressed in their Sunday best, entered the hotel’s stone terrace through a metal gate. In the lobby, we heard the man, Francesco Di Cecce, introduce himself to the manager and explain that he and his wife had come to visit his childhood home. Curious, we followed them as they found their way to Suite 10. "I was born here in 1939," Di Cecce said as he opened the thick wooden door to a cave that went back about 60 feet.

Like the dwellings that surround it, much of the hotel incorporates grottoes, with facades cut into the rock or constructed from limestone blocks. Suite 10 had been transformed into a magical place, glowing with golden artificial light that filtered in through small windows, and from recessed lighting in the walls. The minimal space was simply decorated, with an artfully worn wooden desk, a large bed with a white crocheted cover, arched ceilings and a floor of packed earth and stone tiles.

"I grew up here with my seven brothers and sisters," Di Cecce said. "And the animals lived back there," he said, pointing to the luxurious bathroom with an egg-shaped Philippe Starck bathtub.

In 1945, when "Christ Stopped at Eboli" was published, it brought attention and shame to this forgotten region, sandwiched between Puglia and Calabria. The book was Carlo Levi’s account of the extreme poverty in this Basilicata region. A decade later, Di Cecce and about 15,000 other sassi dwellers were relocated to new low-income housing, and the ancient grotto homes were abandoned.

As I looked around the room that was once the home of a desperately poor family, I recalled something that the American humorist Finley Peter Dunne once said: "The past always looks better than it was because it isn’t here."

Indeed, these days the caves look a lot better than the government housing. In 1993, in an attempt to protect the historically significant sassi, UNESCO declared the Matera sassi a World Heritage site. Gradually, those condemned homes have been transformed into hotels and restaurants. Now that some of the caves are designed with Starck bathtubs and high-tech temperature and humidity control, some travelers spend more than $400 a night to immerse themselves in an enchanted atmosphere of antiquity, even if it means doing without a flat-screen TV or Wi-Fi.

Filmmaker opening hotel

The filmmaker and dabbling hotelier Francis Ford Coppola is contributing to the Basilicata buzz. Next spring he is planning to open the intimate Palazzo Margherita in the remote town of Bernalda, about 25 miles south of Matera, and less than 10 miles from the Mediterranean coast.

Although it is his sixth property, it is his most personal. Coppola’s grandfather Agostino Coppola was born and raised in a "tiny home in the lower part of Bernalda," Coppola wrote in an e-mail. He added that his grandfather, who spoke often of his ancestral village, never failed to call his hometown "Bella Bernalda."

Coppola went to see Bernalda for himself in 1962 and "was embraced by the town and discovered that almost everyone was a cousin." In 2004 he bought

Palazzo Margherita, a grand 19th-century villa. The new inn’s interiors have been designed by the chic Paris-based designer Jacques Grange, and it will feature nine suites, a restaurant and a streetside bar. In his e-mail, Coppola described the charm of Basilicata: "It’s hard to dig a hole in the ground anywhere, without discovering an ancient Greek vase or shard. The wine is great. The olive oil is great. The food is unique. There are things eaten that are unknown anywhere else in Italy."

Eating well

It takes a passionate food explorer to get to Luna Rossa, a restaurant so off the map that one should almost bring along some spare fuel. Along the winding drive through the Pollino National Park to the blink-and-you’ll-drive-by-it village of Terranova di Pollino, it becomes clear why some of Basilicata’s recipes have never left the province.

"Some of the towns in Basilicata are so secluded that you can sometimes find dishes that haven’t changed much since pagan times," said Federico Valicenti, Luna Rossa’s chef and owner, a self-proclaimed culinary anthropologist.

That particular day in May he served his guests a meal that included thinly sliced salami made from acorn-eating pigs raised in Pollino; tapparelle, a local ear-shaped pasta, served with hard ricotta cheese and lemon rind; a roasted goat dish that was inspired by a medieval recipe; and pork served with eggs and local caciocavallo cheese. On the Luna Rossa wine list were dozens of Aglianico del Vulture wines, an ancient red grape variety originally from Greece, grown on the slopes of an extinct volcano in northwest Basilicata.

Although Valicenti searches for inspiration in medieval and Renaissance texts, he said his recipes are his own interpretations of historic dishes. "I make them lighter and use modern cooking techniques," he said.

At the newly opened Hotel Torre Fiore, a 10-minute drive from the small hilltop city of Pisticci, the addictive ricotta cheese served at the breakfast buffet is made by a local cheese artisan whose family has been making ricotta for six generations. The hotel’s chef, in turn, uses it to make a simple but memorable ricotta mousse.

The hotel, surrounded by wildflowers and fields of grain, was once a masseria (a farmhouse with fortified walls typical of southern Italy) built by a wealthy landowner. Now it is a dream realized by the current owner, John Giannone, who was born in Pisticci, but emigrated to Toronto. It was originally planned as a vacation home for his family, but his middle-aged children became so enthusiastic about the area’s potential that they decided to turn it into a boutique hotel with a pool and 13 suites.

The Torre Fiore’s restaurant is popular with well-traveled locals like Roberto Martino and his companion, Angelo Bianco, who drove 45 minutes from Matera to eat there. Originally from Basilicata, the two moved to Florence where they hosted contemporary art happenings. About four years ago they decided to return to Basilicata to run SoutHeritage, a contemporary art foundation that organizes pop-up modern art exhibitions in historic spaces throughout Basilicata.

Martino recalled that the first few shows seemed to attract locals who were looking more for free food and wine than art. "Modern ideas take time to be accepted here," he said. "We’re at least 60 years behind northern Italy." Then, he added with a laugh, "Although sometimes it seems like centuries."

By Gisela Williams

Source: The Seattle Times

Cruise ships and large commercial ships will be banned from dumping any kind of sewage along California’s coast

Cruise ships and large commercial ships will be banned from dumping any kind of sewage — even highly filtered wastewater — along California’s coast out to three miles from shore, under new rules from the Obama administration.

The rules, which are scheduled to be announced Wednesday at a news conference in San Francisco, give California among the strictest laws in the nation limiting pollution from large ships.

Image via odec.ca

"This is going to cover the entire California coastline," said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. "Oceangoing vessels should not consider our coastline a place for dumping sewage."

In 2005, Simitian wrote a bill that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed banning sewage discharges in state waters from cruise ships and commercial ships larger than 300 gross tons.

That bill — the first of its kind in the nation — made it illegal for such ships to discharge oily bilge water, "gray water" from sinks and showers and other hazardous waste. But a key provision that also banned sewage releases could not legally take effect until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave permission under the federal Clean Water Act.

Although California asked the EPA for permission in 2006, the Bush administration did not act on the request.

Officials at EPA regional headquarters in San Francisco declined to comment Monday, saying they would wait until the formal announcement later this week.

But people familiar with the new rule said it will add legal clarity to the state law, so that if a ship did discharge sewage close to shore, its owner could not claim it was immune from penalties because the EPA had yet to act.

"This is a giant step in the protection of our coastal waters," said Teri Shore, program director at Turtle Island Restoration Network in San Francisco.

Industry officials said they already are complying with the state law.

"EPA has discussed it in general with us, and we said that if it follows the provisions in the Simitian statutes I don’t think it should be a problem for us," said John Berge, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association in San Francisco.

The association opposed Simitian’s bill but withdrew opposition when a provision was inserted allowing older ships without the capacity to hold treated sewage to discharge it in state waters.

Cruise lines said they also are following the state law.

"We don’t discharge anything within California’s three-mile limit," said Karen Candy, a spokeswoman for Princess Cruise Lines.

Environmentalists said the clarity from EPA is important, however.

"The cruise lines have pretty much said all along they won’t dump in state waters, but there’s no enforcement," Shore said. "It’s all voluntary. This gives it the force of law."

With fears of international travel high after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, cruise ship visits to U.S. ports — particularly California stops such as Monterey, San Francisco and San Diego — grew steadily. By 2006, there were 81 cruise ship visits to San Francisco Bay, carrying 223,000 passengers.

Although the struggling economy has reduced that trend somewhat — to 62 visits and 179,000 passengers last year — the level remains more than double the pre-Sept. 11 numbers.

"Cruise ships have 3,000 or 4,000 people on them. They are little cities," said Arthur Feinstein, vice chairman of the San Francisco Bay chapter of the Sierra Club. "You can imagine the amount of sewage they put in the water. And they are only getting bigger. So I think this makes a huge difference."

In 2003, the city of Monterey banned all Crystal Cruise ships after the Crystal Harmony dumped 36,000 gallons of gray water and sewage in Monterey Bay. Simitian said that was the impetus behind his bill.

"I remember picking up the paper and thinking, ‘you gotta be kidding me,’ " he said. "Their answer was ‘we didn’t break any rules.’ I remember thinking, if this isn’t against the law it ought to be."

Source: mercurynews.com

For more information head to : http://www.eturbonews.com/18083/california-pass-strictest-cruise-ship-pollution-law-us

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Australia weighs conservation vs tourism in Blue Mountains

More than half a million people a year flock to the Blue Mountains National Park, Australia’s most accessible wilderness, to see its impressive peaks and ancient rainforest.

But Australia is grappling with a dilemma: how to balance conservation with the need for tourist spending.

"Although it looks gorgeous and beautiful it is a park under pressure — there are a lot of vulnerable species in this national park," said Tara Cameron, a local teacher and President of Blue Mountains Conservation Society.

"It’s not a completely resilient piece of nature we can do anything with."

Maintaining wilderness is an expensive business, and visitor numbers have fallen in recent years.

The number of trips including an overnight stay has almost halved in the last decade, from 1.045 million in 1999, according to Tourism Research Australia figures quoted in the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

They show an 18 percent drop in one year, from 687,000 in 2008 to 563,000 last year.

The New South Wales government now wants to increase both tourist numbers and spending by attracting visitors interested in a more comfortable, less rugged experience.

Its tourism strategy has attracted criticism for refusing to rule out development within the park.

Mark Jarvis, who runs a hotel in Katoomba, the main tourist town in the Blue Mountains, just an hour and a half from Sydney, said: "We’re very concerned because the uniqueness of area revolves around the fact that we sit in between World Heritage parks.

"So the fact that they are looking at developing, the fact that if there is a potential to do it, it’s not right for this area.

"It’s not in Sydney’s interests to see this area develop — the attraction for Sydney people to come here is our lack of development."

Cameron agreed: "What I see happening in New South Wales is a distraction and diversion away from nature conservation as the primary purpose of parks — and if we don’t focus on that the standards and the state of our parks will slowly decline."

However, Randal Walker, chairman of Blue Mountains Tourism, argued that it is possible to develop sustainable tourism without damaging the natural beauty that visitors come to see.

"If there was increased interest in development, I think those investors would only do it in terms of: is it sustainable?" said Walker. "Is there going to be a return on investment? And it’s going to be in built-up areas where zoning allows it. I don’t think there would be any development that would be a negative impact on the environment."

"We have to have a sustainable impact on the natural asset, which all tourism operators value and treasure and want to preserve."

Penelope Figgis, a government advisor on conservation and tourism, also believes the park has to develop.

She said: "Everybody is looking for how we can make national parks relevant into the future. We have very urbanized population who are not as connected with nature.

"The New South Wales government wanted to see how we could connect with nature but also at the same time stimulate regional economies through tourism activities related to nature conservation.

"I can’t think of a better way to persuade somebody to be an advocate for a beautiful and wild area than going there and immersing themselves in that experience," she added.

The danger in this quest for something new, is turning nature into a commodity, argued Cameron.

"I think national parks and nature is worth more than just being the new thing, the sort of new product," she said.

"We have 92 percent of the state of New South Wales that is taken up by people.

"Only eight percent is national park. They’re the bits that we’ve put aside for nature — do we really need to encroach on those as well.

"The coffee shop is not an endangered species. Humans are doing very well — we are looking after ourselves very well. At some point we need to say: ‘When is it nature’s turn?’"

For the rest of story head to:

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/22/australia.blue.mountains/?hpt=C2

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one of the Largest Hotel Groups to Commit to Green Globe Certification for all Properties Worldwide

Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts is to become one of the Largest Hotel Groups to Commit to Green Globe Certification for all Properties Worldwide. With the new Partnership the Swiss Hotel Company underpins its Ambition to set an Example for the Industry. The Strategy is Part of a Company-wide Programme to Establish a Common and Global Approach to Environmental, Employer and Social Sustainability.

Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts is aiming to set a new benchmark for sustainability by committing to a certification partnership with the internationally acclaimed Green Globe. The aim is inspiring: to certify 20 per cent of operating Moevenpick hotels, resorts and cruises by the end of 2011 as well as all properties of the company over the following 24 months. In cooperation with Green Globe, clear and measurable objectives for environmental sustainability are set.

Environmental awareness is nothing new to Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts. With Swiss heritage and values at its heart, the company celebrates practices that demonstrate environmental responsibility. So far, several properties of the hotel group have been awarded for their commitment to sustainability with local and global prizes.

"Now more than ever, we believe it is time to not only increase awareness with regards to sustainability in Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts and share best practice, but also to more effectively measure our progress towards a sustainable future", declares Jean Gabriel Peres, President & CEO of Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts.

 For further information, please visit

http://www.moevenpick-hotels.com/en/pub/service/media_lounge/news.cfm

About Green Globe

The origins of the Green Globe organisation can be traced back to the United Nations Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, where 182 heads of state from around the world endorsed the Agenda 21 principles of sustainable development. Two years later, the Green Globe membership was established. The Green Globe brand represents the best in sustainable practice within the travel and tourism sector and provides certification, training and marketing services in 83 countries. For information visit http://www.greenglobe.com

About Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts, an upscale hotel management company with over 12,000 employees, is represented through over 90 hotels existing or under construction in 27 countries with a concentration on its core markets in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The hotel group is owned by Moevenpick Holding (66.7%) and the Kingdom Group (33.3%).