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Each Center Parcs village has a similar style of lodges built among the forest
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Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Center Parcs is also enjoying its success in the first Carbon Reduction Commitment league table as one of 22 companies who shared the top place. “We’re really pleased with the result,” says Chris Brooks, corporate sustainability manager. “It sends out a clear message to our guests. We’ve always been good at looking after the immediate local environment so it makes sense to go further and our guests know to expect it.”
It’s certainly true that Center Parcs is known for the attention paid to the local environment surrounding its four holiday villages –Sherwood Forest, Elveden Forest, Longleat Forest and Whinfell Forest, as well as its fifth village, Woburn Forest, which is currently under development. Each destination has a similar style of lodges built among the forest, giving the impression of living in harmony with the surrounding trees and streams.
There is a focus on the importance of wildlife and encouraging biodiversity throughout –the Whinfell Forest site in Cumbria is also home to a protected red squirrel population. So environmental awareness runs through the company’s veins, energy saving and carbon reduction comes more naturally to Center Parcs than maybe it does for some other organisations.
That’s not to say it’s been easy, though. As Brooks explains, a huge amount of work has gone into developing the company’s sustainability strategy and carbon reduction programme since he started in his newly created role almost two years ago. Achieving the Carbon Trust Standard was an important goal and an essential ingredient for CRC victory. “There is now extensive automatic metering across the four villages and also the headquarters,” says Brooks. To boost any energy savings achieved by metering, there is also healthy competition between the sites. “It’s important for the villages to take ownership of their own performance.” Each site has a carbon budget and a reduction target and strives to be the best performing village. It must help that every staff member has a bonus attached to the sustainability performance.
As well as the 6,000 staff, the sustainability message is made apparent to Center Parcs’ 1.6m annual visitors too, which Brooks describes as “a great opportunity for knowledge sharing”. With an impressive occupancy of 97%, it seems that the visitors are not put off by this in the slightest. The message is spread in a variety of ways, from literature explaining the numerous green initiatives through to the charities it chooses to support, which are those dedicated to children’s and environmental issues.
But while Brooks is keen to spread the word to the guests, it is also important that the quality they expect from a Center Parcs break is not compromised in the name of sustainability. “The best energy-saving initiative is the one that people don’t notice,” he says. A holiday should only ever be enhanced by sustainability measures – hotel and accommodation owners do not want guests to associate going green with going without.
This explains why there has been an incredible attention to detail when it comes to selecting the right products and solutions. Brooks explains: “It is a complex procurement process as we have been trialling lots of different solutions. For example, when looking at which LEDs we would use, we installed various types in different buildings so we could closely monitor the performance, in terms of quality and energy use, and make sure we ended up with the right lighting for us before it was rolled out across the villages.”
The company also has to weigh up the often conflicting challenges of expansion and carbon reduction, making sure any new addition to an existing village, as well as its new village in Woburn, are as green as they can be. Brooks says: “The new site will have a biomass district heating system and we’re looking at the options for incorporating other renewables, but it’s difficult to get successful solar or wind installations in a forest.”
Looking ahead, Center Parcs wants to become the leading sustainable tourism destination in the UK, and with the measures already underway, as well as those in the pipeline, this seems a wholly achievable goal. By 2020 it aims to have slashed its carbon emissions by 20% (from its 2009/10 baseline) and be producing 10% of its energy from renewable sources. That’s on top of the plan to make the new Woburn Forest an exemplar development using 25% less energy than the existing sites.
Sustainability features
- LED lighting
- Water-saving showers
- Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems
- Comprehensive energy metering
- Staff sustainability bonus
- Low-energy kitchen equipment
- Biomass district heating at Woburn Village
- Recycled materials wherever possible, such as the recycled plastic decking
- Encouraging guests to segregate and recycle waste
- Protecting and enhancing each site’s biodiversity
- Promoting staff fitness and active lifestyles
- Electric vehicle fleet for housekeeping and technical services
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