The hotel has received this prestigious award in recognition of its hard work and commitment to local sustainability and is the only hotel in Oxford to have achieved this outstanding accolade.
The Oxford Thames Four Pillars Hotel is proud to announce that it has successfully been awarded the Gold Award for Green Tourism through the Green Tourism Business Scheme. The hotel has received this prestigious award in recognition of its hard work and commitment to local sustainability and is the only hotel in Oxford to have achieved this outstanding accolade.
The Oxford Thames Four Pillars Hotel, under the guidance of Mairi Soutter, Deputy General Manager who heads up the ‘Green Team’, met extremely stringent criteria to achieve the gold standard. The hotel excelled in areas relating to energy management, water saving, waste reduction, commitment to buying and sourcing local produce and also supporting the local community and charities. With its unique position overlooking the River Thames and Heyford Meadow nature reserve, the hotel was also recognised for its efforts and involvement in maintaining Heyford Meadow in collaboration with the Oxford Preservation Trust and the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust.
Jonathan Oldroyd, General Manager at Oxford Thames Four Pillars Hotel, said: “We are absolutely delighted to win the Gold Award and also hugely proud to be the first hotel in Oxford to do so. The Green Team, together with the wider hotel team, have all worked so hard to win this and it is testament to their dedication on a daily basis to ensure we keep our environmental impact as low as possible whilst not compromising the standards that our guests expect.”
The Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) is the national sustainable tourism certification scheme for the UK and is the only national scheme to be independently validated by the International Centre for Responsibility (ICRT) on behalf of Visit England, Visit Wales and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and endorsed by Visit Scotland and Failte Ireland. Businesses opting to join the scheme are assessed by a qualified grading advisor against a rigorous set of criteria, covering a range of areas, such as energy and water efficiency, waste management, biodiversity and more. Those businesses that meet the required standard, receive a Bronze, Silver, or Gold award based on their level of achievement.
Four Pillars Hotels has a further five hotels within its collection, each of them also individually holding awards for their efforts in sustainable and responsible tourism. The Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel holds a Gold Award, while the remaining four hotels hold Silver Awards. One of the group’s initiatives is for companies hosting events and conferences who wish to mitigate the effect of their carbon footprint. Through a partnership with OxTreeGen (who offer sustainable woodlands in the UK) companies can use an online tool on www.meetingsfouryou.co.uk to calculate what it would take to make the event carbon neutral and then Four Pillars Hotels will plant the requisite number of trees via OxTreeGen.
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