Hotels for Trees | Blycolin becomes Founding Partner
Blycolin founding partner of Hotels for Trees 
Blycolin founding partner of Hotels for Trees
Blycolin becomes Founding Partner of Hotels for Trees. The international specialist in linen service for the hospitality industry offers the foundation financial support for further European growth. Furthermore, Blycolin will promote the concept among its more than 2,000 hotel customers.
Hotels for Trees is committed to making hotel room cleaning more sustainable by converting savings into planting trees. Until now they have planted 5,000 trees, their goal for 2022 is 100,000 trees and by 2025 even 1 million trees. It is an easy concept to implement for both the hotels and their guests. A number of renowned Dutch hotels are already participating, such as Grand Hotel De Draak, Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin, Banks Mansion and Hotel Kapellerput. More about this concept in this article.
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Blycolin plants the first tree for every hotel that joins
Blycolin offers carefree linen management for hotels, restaurants and wellness centers. In this area they’re the market leader in the Benelux, Germany and Poland. Blycolin will plant the first tree for every hotel that is their customer and who joins Hotels for Trees. The partnership is valid for at least five years.
According to Marc van Boekholt, CEO of Blycolin, the collaboration with this foundation fits in perfectly with what the organization has been doing for years: “Our partnership with Hotels for Trees fits very well into Blycolin’s vision in which we take our responsibility for a sustainable way to conduct business. We offer our customers sustainable total solutions that contribute to an optimal quality experience. This wonderful initiative has a direct sustainable impact and we, as ambassadors, are happy to make an effort to convince our customers to embrace this initiative and bring it to the attention of their guests. Every stay-over room that chooses to plant a tree instead of room cleaning costs us a little turnover, but this immediately produces a tree. It is actually impossible to make a more concrete impact.”
In the past we wrote about the sustainable ‘reborn bed sheet’ from Blycolin in Dutch but they have a webpage in English about their sustainability.
Sustainability through savings on hotel room cleaning
Hotels for Trees wants to make the hotel industry within Europe permanently sustainable by converting savings on room cleaning into new trees to be planted. Floris Licht, Chief Tree Planting Officer at this foundation, sees this partnership as an important step in the growth: “We planted the 5,000th tree earlier this month and are currently expanding to Germany, Austria, Belgium and France. With Blycolin’s support, we hope to be able to plant more than 100,000 trees by 2022.”
How does Hotels for Trees work for hotels?
Over 1% of all CO2 emission on our planet is caused by the hotel industry and the travel, services and deliveries that are linked to it (source). Fortunately, there is a growing number of hotels that offers their guests an easy and transparent way to compensate (a part of) their CO2 impact. This is a great development, since in a post-COVID-19 world there is an ever-increasing demand for this.
Guests book a multiple night stay at a participating hotel. During this stay guests hang the unique Hotels for Trees door hanger outside their room for one or multiple days. On these days the hotel skips the room cleaning. The total number of rooms not cleaned is entered into an online portal that same evening. As soon as these figures have been entered the total number of trees planted is shown on the website per hotel and per day. Hotels that participate pay the foundation 5 Euro for each room that is not cleaned. The foundation invoices the hotels each month and ensures that the corresponding number of trees is planted.
Hotels for Trees was founded in May 2021 and is currently working on obtaining Dutch ANBI status (special charity trademark including tax benefits for people who donate). The foundation is non-profit, headed by a board of three and overseen by a Supervisory Board. All donations are spent on (re-)forestation projects or used for running or growing Hotels for Trees. For the execution of the (re-)forestation projects Hotels for Trees collaborates with Trees for All, a Dutch foundation which is founded in 1999.
Website: Blycolin and Hotels for Trees
