Meet with Purpose, a concept designed to make it easier for meeting pros to reduce waste, add CSR components and incorporate health and wellness into meetings and events, has been introduced by Hilton Worldwide.
Inspired by its corporate responsibility strategy, Travel with Purpose, Hilton gathered feedback from customers and sales team members to identify the most pressing sustainability issues for meetings and events. This research was distilled into two main focus areas:
- Mindful Eating encourages meeting professionals to re-examine event dining to minimize food waste and encourage healthy choices. Hilton’s solutions include portion control, sourcing locally, pre-plating salads and establishing central water stations with resusable containers.
- Mindful Meeting inspires meeting professionals to host more sustainable events by considering practices that are less resource intensive. The solutions range from using paperless registration and placing notepads in a central location to turning off climate control when a meeting room isn’t in use.
“Today’s meeting attendees seek greater meaning in their event experiences and expect event planners to consider the broader implications of the meeting itself,” explains Lesley Brasesco, Hilton Worldwide’s managing director of sales effectiveness for the Americas. “Meet with Purpose offers meeting professionals a menu of options that make it easy to incorporate sustainable, impactful and healthy choices that deliver on the broader corporate responsibility commitments of our customers and Hilton.”
Examples of Meet with Purpose being put into practice include:
- Hilton’s team helped a company hosting a 60,000+ attendee event at Hilton San Francisco Union Square to recycle 66,858 pounds of waste material, source approximately 30 per cent of energy from renewable sources, and contribute more than 1.3 tons of food donations.
- Hilton Chicago has a robust recycling and composting program, efficient water systems and partners with local farms to source food locally in addition to growing its own vegetables on a rooftop garden. The hotel works with customers to incorporate these practices into meetings and events hosted at the hotel, adding value for attendees and the host company.
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