AUCKLAND: The Hotel Britomart, New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star hotel, has released its first sustainability report. The report, which will be published annually, sets out the hotel’s sustainability goals and details its commitment to sustainable operations.

“It was a huge effort to build and open the country’s first 5 Green Star hotel,” says Clinton Farley, The Hotel Britomart’s general manager. “Now we’re committed to operating the hotel sustainably every day. Environmental and community impact is a key business consideration for the entire team, and our sustainability report is an important way of setting goals and holding ourselves accountable.”

The Hotel Britomart opened in October 2020, with its design and build certified with 5 Green Star ratings from the NZ Green Building Council. Since then, it has been recognised with a Gold Sustainable Tourism Award from Qualmark, New Zealand tourism’s official quality assurance organisation, the Best Sustainable Business award at the NZ Hospitality Awards, and was runner up in National Geographic magazine’s international Good Egg award for the most sustainable hotel.

The Hotel Britomart team has an intense focus on sustainable operations. This year, the hotel has embarked on a process to become a Toitū Carbonreduce organisation to enable it to track and reduce its operational emissions. It has also introduced a plastic-free policy which asks all products supplied to the hotel be delivered in fully home compostable, biodegradable, recyclable or reusable packaging. So far, it has achieved 95 percent compliance from its suppliers.

Sustainability commitments extend into the hotel’s procurement policy: 80 percent of all goods procured by the hotel are New Zealand-made, localising the supply chain and reducing emissions. Local suppliers include Nelson-based uniform designer Tamzin Hawkins, who ensures all the hotel’s uniforms are New Zealand-made from compostable fabrics, the Chatham Island Food Co, which supplies sustainably harvested seafood to kingi, the hotel’s restaurant, and local ceramicists Rachel Carter and Elena Renker, whose work features in each guest room in the hotel.

“All these efforts show that we’re not just saying we’re a sustainble hotel – we’re doing the work to prove it,” Clinton Farley says. “We’re also looking to continuously improve, so our sustainability report helps set a benchmark for ourselves, and offers transparency to our guests as well.”

Stay Green: Guests can book The Hotel Britomart’s Stay Green package and contribute to offsetting their carbon footprint. For every booking received, the hotel plants a native tree at its sister property, The Landing, in the Bay of Islands. The package includes an overnight stay and a leisurely lunch in kingi, The Hotel Britomart’s restaurant with a focus on sustainably sourced ingredients. Each booking also receives a gift that celebrates the talents of local artisans such as pottery by Rachel Carter, 100 percent zero-waste blankets from Mavis and Osborn and much more.

Dine in kingi: Visit kingi, The Hotel Britomart’s restaurant, which was recently awarded two hats in the Cuisine Good Food Awards. Enjoy a two-course lunch celebrating locally sourced and caught seafood and learn about the fishermen and women and their sustainable fishing practices, while enjoying a glass of kingi’s house wine.

Click here to book any of the above offerings. The Hotel Britomart’s Sustainability Report 2022 can be accessed via this link.

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What’s in a name: The Hotel Britomart (The hotel’s name cannot be shortened).

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
Clinton Farley, General Manager
+64 9 300 9595 / [email protected]

About The Hotel Britomart
Located in downtown waterfront Auckland’s Britomart precinct. The Hotel Britomart has 99 guest rooms and five luxurious Landing Suites that offer an oasis of calm in the centre of the city. Designed by Cheshire Architects, it is New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star hotel, certified by the NZ Green Building Council. Find out more at thehotelbritomart.com.

About kingi
kingi (short for kingfish) is a restaurant that offers fresh, locally sourced food in thoughtful, approachable ways. Located just steps from The Hotel Britomart lobby on the ground floor of the heritage Masonic Building (which has been refurbished as part of The Hotel Britomart project), kingi introduces guests at the hotel to the city, and welcomes Aucklanders with an easy-going warmth that tells them it’s their place too. Open for everything from early-morning coffee to drinks, snacks, aperitifs, and fuller plates at night, kingi also offers The Hotel Britomart guests selected items as a room service menu throughout the day.

About Collection by TFE Hotels 
The Hotel Britomart is an affiliate of TFE Hotels under the Collection by TFE Hotels brand. The Collection by TFE Hotels represents beautiful hotels hallmarked by authenticity and provenance, each designed with individual character and charm. With a collection of properties that encompass striking design, customised service and attention to the individual such as The Calile Hotel Brisbane, Melbourne’s The Savoy Hotel on Little Collins and Hotel Kurrajong Canberra. The Hotel Britomart embodies these concepts while remaining proudly a product of its unique location.

The Hotel Britomart has picked up another global accolade, this time in National Geographic Traveller Magazine’s annual Hotel Awards. The London-based magazine’s annual Hotel Awards acknowledge the latest tastemakers, trendsetters and game-changers in the hotel business around the world.

The Hotel Britomart, New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star hotel, was awarded runner-up in the Good Egg (most sustainable hotel) category. Xigera Safari Lodge in Botswana won the category, while Costa Rica’s Cielo Lodge was also a runner-up.

“We’re honoured to be included in this prestigious list, and delighted that the hard work we put into ensuring The Hotel Britomart is a sustainability leader is being recognised,” says Clinton Farley, General Manager of The Hotel Britomart. “Genuine sustainability requires serious commitment in the design and build of a hotel and in its ongoing operations. We know that sustainability matters to our guests, and that our efforts in this area enhance their experience of visiting the hotel. That’s why we continue to strive to minimise the environmental impact of every facet of our day-to-day work.”

The Hotel Britomart’s 5 Green Star rating is certified by the New Zealand Green Building Council. This rating required detailed attention in every aspect of the building, from choice of materials and paints to the selection of efficient tapware, lighting, and state-of-the-art air conditioning systems. 80% of construction waste at the hotel was recycled, while the building is designed to have 50% fewer carbon emissions than a structure that meets the minimum standards of the local building code.

The commitment of the hotel team to sustainability extended beyond what was required for certification. The hotel’s uniforms, for example, are made of sustainably sourced linen and organic cotton and were dyed and made in New Zealand. They can be re-dyed to extend their life, and will compost when they’re no longer suitable to wear. Pillows and duvets in the guest rooms are filled with a microfibre derived from recycled plastic bottles, while the bed linen, bathrobes and towelling are all certified organic cotton. The hotel’s restaurant kingi, works with a local glass studio, recycling glass water bottles into plates and carafes and is a champion of supporting sustainable fisheries.

Like all the buildings in the Britomart precinct, The Hotel Britomart’s ongoing environmental performance is audited and managed using the NZ Green Building Council’s Green Star Performance Tool. Click here for the full list of Hotel Award winners.

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What’s in a name: The Hotel Britomart (name cannot be shortened)
Website: https://thehotelbritomart.com/ 
Sustainability: https://thehotelbritomart.com/sustainable/

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Tim Feibel, Marketing Manager
+64 21 572 747 / [email protected]

About The Hotel Britomart:
Located in downtown waterfront Auckland’s Britomart precinct. The Hotel Britomart has 99 guest rooms and five luxurious Landing Suites that offer an oasis of calm in the centre of the city. Designed by Cheshire Architects, it is New Zealand’s first 5 Green Star hotel, certified by the NZ Green Building Council. Find out more at thehotelbritomart.com.

About Collection by TFE Hotels
The Hotel Britomart is an affiliate of TFE Hotels under the Collection by TFE Hotels brand. The Collection by TFE Hotels represents beautiful hotels hallmarked by authenticity and provenance, each designed with individual character and charm. With a collection of properties that encompass striking design, customised service and attention to the individual such as The Calile Hotel Brisbane, Melbourne’s The Savoy Hotel on Little Collins and Hotel Kurrajong Canberra. The Hotel Britomart embodies these concepts while remaining proudly a product of its unique location.

The grass is officially greener on The Calile side, with their rooftop now home to an organic, edible garden and a hive of very happy busy bees.

Making the most of the sunshine, eight tidy wooden planter boxes now line the Doggett Street side of the hotel’s roof. Installed earlier this year – French millet, buckwheat, mung bean and other legumes were the first crops to be planted, cultivated and composted in order to produce organic ‘green manure’ – soil for growing healthy, strong and nutrient rich produce.

Last month, the autumn crop was planted, featuring more than 42 varieties of lettuce, sorrel, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, garlic and grapevines to name just a few.

The seedlings have been selected to not only supply and compliment the menus of Lobby Bar and other in-house restaurants, but to pay homage to the hotel owners’ Lebanese heritage.

Lobby Bar Head Chef, Andy Gunn said, “The goal is to achieve zero waste, the menu is flexible enabling us to replace ingredients where required”.

It’s Andy, who alongside the Future Wild team, will continue to farm The Calile garden.

“It sets Lobby Bar apart from other venues and ,as a Chef, it’s an amazing tool and privilege to have this on the roof,” he said.

The produce has been planted with organic, biodynamic and permaculture principles in mind – by growing nasturtium, borage, marigolds and alyssum, pests will be organically controlled and the neighbouring honeybees fed.

To overcome Brisbane’s volatile weather, The Calile’s architect, Ingrid Richards of Richards And Spence, designed a custom-arched trellis to sit over the planters to encourage green canopy growth – made up of plants like grapevines, peas and cucumbers that will in turn, protect the crops.​​​​​​​

The Bees and The Bees, No Birds
No garden is complete without some welcome pollinators – bee tête-à-tête starts now.  Four Langstroth hives take up residence next to the edible garden and play home to thousands of bees. There is one queen per hive and approximately 85% of the ‘worker bees’ are female (girl power!).

Each hive has ten frames (where the bees do their business) and each frame produces roughly 2.3 kilograms of honey.

This means that sweet, sweet Calile honey will soon be stocked in the hotel’s lobby shop, Museum of Small Things (M.O.S.T.) and be featured in Lobby Bar dishes.

Busy Bee Facts:
According to The Calile’s resident Apiarist, Amy Murray:

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Kristie Mancell
Sales & Marketing Manager, The Calile
+61 432 707 722 / [email protected]

Jodi Clark
Director of Communications, TFE Hotels
+61 499 900 658 / [email protected]

ABOUT COLLECTION BY TFE HOTELS
Collection by TFE Hotels represent beautiful hotels hallmarked by authenticity and provenance, each designed with individual character and charm. With a collection of properties that encompass striking design and attention to the individual such as The Calile Hotel Brisbane, The Hotel Britomart in Auckland, Melbourne’s The Savoy Hotel on Little Collins and Hotel Kurrajong Canberra.