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FAQ

Hotels

What does it cost to participate in Hotels for Trees?

The only cost is for the door hangers, which you can download from our online Dashboard and print locally.

In addition to contributing to a healthier planet and potentially strengthening the hotel’s image in this area, every room that is not cleaned also saves on cleaning costs after the donation is made.

There are many simple ways to bring the initiative to life and engage both guests and staff throughout the hotel experience.

How to plant more with housekeeping

  • With direct booking, give the option to opt-out of housekeeping and schedule housekeeping efficiently.
  • Remind guests via WhatsApp that they can plant a tree by skipping room cleaning (e.g. through Askng.it).
  • Share tree-planting projects with guests to increase transparency and engagement.
  • Share parts of the impact report to make results more tangible for guests and stakeholders.
  • Use in-room TV’s or lobby screens for showing additional information or video of HFT.
  • Use promotional materials to make the concept more visible (see download page on the dashboard).
  • Place door hangers on beds to encourage guests to participate.
  • Display door hangers at reception to raise awareness and start conversations.
  • Motivate staff with competitions (e.g. prizes for most trees planted or best ideas).
  • Some hotels inform guests about the initiative during their stay via a short phone call.
  • Join tree-planting days in branded clothing and use photos for promotional purposes.

 

How to add extra trees

  • Organize events in collaboration with partners at your hotel to raise awareness of environmental and social responsibility.
  • If the housekeeping concept is not working for you, you can always plant a tree per stay or a fixed amount per day/month.
  • Join Meetings for Trees, where bookers can choose to include tree planting. Or you can plant a tree for every meeting/conference held at your hotel.
  • Add tree-planting as an optional add-on during booking.
  • Donate a set amount to HFT for every meal or drink ordered from your menu that meets your environmental criteria.
  • Hold brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas and engage the team.

Practice shows that guests use this initiative 2 – 3 times more often than initiatives where they receive nothing or only a voucher in exchange for not cleaning the room. Hotels for Trees is therefore convinced that this initiative is also very interesting for hotels that already use another initiative in this area. Should there be any doubts about this, a pilot of a few months without obligations is always possible.

Each day at 2 p.m., the front desk of the participating hotel receives an automated reminder to enter that day’s uncleaned rooms into a locked portal. These numbers can be found directly on the website. Once a month, the hotel receives an invoice for the number of trees planted. This donation is VAT-free and will be invoiced from an organization with a special charity trademark, which may provide tax advantages for hotels. The payment term of this invoice is 30 days.

When planting new forests and restoring existing ones, our afforestation partners always consider the effects on biodiversity. Here, it is important to consider species diversity, the natural environment and sustainable management.

They all ensure that many different tree and shrub species are planted in its projects. This lays the foundation for a varied and robust forest. And moreover, a forest where, thanks to this broad species composition, many other plants, fungi and animals find a place.

We guarantee the planting of your trees! We have a contract with our afforestation partners that include agreements on activities, outputs and impact. Through reports, field visits and solid monitoring that both our afforestation partners share with us, we closely monitor our projects. We provide updates about this via newsletters and social media.

Guests

What do I need to do to participate in this initiative?

All you have to do is book a room for a multi-day stay at one of the participating hotels and hang the unique door hanger on the door handle of the room during one or more days.

The hotel you sleep in processes the number of rooms not cleaned every night in an online portal. These numbers are immediately visible to guests on the website.

For our (re)forestation projects, Hotels for Trees works with Trees for All, ReForest Now, Forktree, Evertreen, Trillion Trees, Fifteen Trees, One Tree Planted and Ecodrive. Trees for All and ReForest Now have a dedicated charity trademark and have been active in reforestation for many years. The other organisations also have extensive experience in this field.

Hotel donations are used to support (re)forestation projects and to operate and grow Hotels for Trees. For every donation, Hotels for Trees receives a certificate from Trees for All detailing the trees and projects made possible by the combined donations from participating hotels.

You can find these certificates in the footer of our website.

When staying in hotels you produce between 30 – 50 kg of CO2 with every Euro 100 you spend. The exact amount of CO2 depends of course on your specific behavior, the number of guests in the room and the facilities of the hotel. The average adult tree captures around 20 kg of CO2 per year. Considering the fact that a tree can easily become 20 years old, it becomes clear that planting a tree is a considerable step in the right direction.