CHLA California Lodging News January/February 2022

6 CALIFORNIA LODGING NEWS www.calodging.com WE’VE ALL HEARD THE PHRASE “consumers vote with their wallets,” but many hotels forget that they too can shape the industries that help them run. Indeed, hospitality professionals exert outsized purchasing power because, regardless of whether you run a hotel, motel, or small CABBI inn, your business is akin to a small city. With that purchasing power comes the ability to call for designs, technologies, and programs that better fit your business’s needs. In the world of consumables, this means that hotels have the ability to drive changes which increase efficiencies, decrease waste, reduce overall costs, or simply fit better with the unique and welcoming atmosphere you work so hard to cultivate. While our businesses are becoming more eco-friendly than ever, we still consume our fair share of single use products in our day-to-day business (think soaps, cleaning materials, and even trash bags). As hotels have adapted to new regulations, so too have businesses that support hotel operations. In response to increased demand for products compatible with shower dispensers following California’s plastic bottle ban, shower product manufacturers have increased the number of soaps, lotions, and lathers that can be used with large dispensers. In response to hoteliers’ need for a way to convey amenities to guests in a pandemic-friendly manner, manufacturers designed automated robots to keep guests safe (while these designs were already in the works, the pandemic helped increase the prevalence of these technologies). In response to unpleasant odors which develop when trash is left sitting, manufacturers developed odor locking trash bags. All of these innovations originated as ideas to address an issue and were eventually backed by an industry who saw the benefits of each design. Further, in each of these cases, hoteliers demanded solutions to problems and voted to solve the issue by purchasing these products. Demand Directs Development How Hotels Can Use Their Existing Purchasing Power to Spur Cost-Saving Development By John Brady, Founder of Noslipbags.com

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