Green Key Global Selects The Inverness Hotel and Conference Center to Participate in the Green Key Meetings U.S. Pilot Program

Online, June 13, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Key Meetings, a partnership between Green Key Global and Meeting Professionals International, announced it has selected The Inverness Hotel and Conference Center and two other properties in Detroit, MI and Sunnyvale, CA to participate in the U.S. Green Key Meetings pilot program. The Green Key Meetings Program, which launched last month in Canada, is an industry standards and assessment tool to uniformly evaluate a property's sustainable meeting operations in one centralized location online. As a pilot participant, hotel executives and meetings directors will evaluate the standards and assessment tools and provide feedback at the American Hotel & Lodging Association Summer Summit in Atlanta, GA on June 15.

How does it work?
Green Key Meetings is the first, organized industry effort to develop a standards and assessment tool for properties to self-assess their green efforts and for meeting planners looking for reliable metrics on green hotels. To earn a Green Key Meetings rating, properties must complete a self-assessment comprised of 84 green standards in six conference and meetings areas. Standards range from basic efforts such as recycling bins in meetings rooms to more progressive efforts such as having an annual energy audit.

Based on the results, properties are awarded a 1-5 Green Key Meetings rating. Upon program completion, an impromptu, on-site inspection is conducted to confirm the property's self-assessment rating. Currently, Green Key Meetings is the only program of its kind to conduct on-site inspections and validation of ratings in Canada and the United States.

For travel, meeting and conference planners, Green Key Meetings provides a convenient and reliable online resource to evaluate and cross-compare green efforts at hotels. Planners can visit the site and see how properties perform in six pre-determined categories, including 1) Core Areas (Carbon, Energy, Waste, Water, Air Quality); 2) Communication (Information, Training); 3) Activities (Purchasing, Auditing, Community); 4) People (Health); 5) Exhibitions and 6) Audio/Visual.

"We are enthusiastic to be part of a collaborative initiative to standardize and advance green meetings in the hospitality industry," said George Fischer, Vice President, Managing Director at The Inverness Hotel and Conference Center. "We look forward to integrating Green Key Meetings and giving our guests viable options to make their meetings productive, affordable and greener."

Destination Earth at The Inverness Hotel
In 2008, The Inverness Hotel's parent company, Destination Hotels & Resorts, launched Destination Earth, a national, multi-property initiative to encourage individual hotels to implement practices and programs to lessen their environmental footprint. A long-standing model of green hospitality, The Inverness Hotel has integrated more than 100 sustainable practices on property. The hotel's efforts run the gamut of basic standards and polices such as using sleep mode for all office equipment and replacing plastic and Styrofoam items with reusable or recyclable items to more concerted efforts such as an opt-out linens program, local purveyor business program and replacing all cleaning chemicals with natural and organic biodegradable products.

To learn more about the pilot program and the hotel's efforts, visit www.invernesshotel.com and www.greenkeyglobal.com online.