The Davidson Difference: Sustainability with Chris Richardson

Over the past two years, Covid has put a strain on our entire economy all over the world. The hospitality sector was highly impacted, as travel was at a standstill which took a toll on operators, owners, investors and most importantly…line level team members which are our boots on the ground. When we started closing the doors to many of our hotels and resorts, we started look at every penny on our P&L in order to help us sustain operations. Most importantly, we wanted to get our team members back to work so they could continue to provide for their families.

Now that we’re back to a somewhat normal state, we’re continuing to look deep at each property P&L in order to not only maximize our deliverables to our investors and owners, but to right size our staffing for each asset. With rising costs of food, linen, paper products and fuel, this is also making a large impact on the company’s P&L and investors return. Here at Davidson Hospitality Group, we’re taking a deeper dive into our carbon foot print. We’re looking at energy and fuel consumptions along with our food waste in order to help with fewer trip made by our waste partner. To date, we’ve started asking strategic partners to identify our consumptions to ensure our rates are in line with the amount of energy we’re consuming. Narrowing this down will enable us to get better rates across the board.

With us getting our rates in-line, we then start to narrow in on grants and rebates given by our energy providers. Every month, different energy saving grants/ rebates are released to each provider in order to lower consumption by the end user. So far, we’ve been able to obtain property wide light LED light bulbs free of any charges to our properties in Denver, Colorado due to securing the energy grant. Also, in Arlington Virginia, we were able to secure a grant where again — completely free of charge — we were able to have a HVAC contractor clean every HVAC unit within the building while also resealing the duct work in order to maximize the operation of each unit, entailing a lower operation cycle and meeting its set point at the manufactures original spec.

Lastly, we’re vetting out the latest technology of real time energy, natural gas and water consumption in real-time in order to see consumption as it happens to ensure our buildings are running as efficient as possible. Not only does the program give us data in the moment, but it records historical data that will help in credits back to the property such as cooling tower blow down credit as well as evaporation credits. Metering these locations along with a digital recorder help ensure the provider has its necessary data in order to complete the credits. This technology will allow our leaders to look at the entire Davidson portfolio to see how the company as a whole is performing when it comes to energy performance. With utilities being the biggest wildcard when budgeting, this software will assist with in-the-day-for-the-day budgeting and forecasting for our property leaders.

To be able to vet the above is just the beginning for Davidson. As we dive deeper into our assets throughout our portfolio, we will narrow down additional carbon footprint reduction to include food waste recycling that will break 100% of food water into pure water that is suitable for discharging into your sanitary drains. Technology is ever changing and we’re looking to adapt in everyway possible in order to reduce our foot print in the beautiful places we live in. We’re excited to see the additional rollouts in 2022 & 2023!