HOTEL CONTINENTAL: ALMOST 200 YEARS OF EVOLUTION
Hotel Continental is a family hotel company in Barcelona with almost 200 years of history. Perhaps this is what best reflects our commitment to the city, our employees and society. In so many years, we had to overcome situations of all kinds. The strongest and saddest was the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and, one of the most precious moments, the Olympics of Barcelona’92.
We have also experienced the impressive transformation that the tourism sector has lived thanks to the arrival of the Internet. We were already pioneers then buying the domain hotelcontinental.com!
In addition to our vital responsibility: to offer the best service and maximum comfort to our customers, we have the responsibility of contributing to the people who work with us and their families.
In our previous post we published our purposes for 2019. Now, we believe that it is a good idea to summarize the lines of work we have been carrying out for years and that are aimed at “making” tourism a more sustainable activity.
What do we understand by Sustainable Tourism?
First of all, we will try to explain what we understand by sustainable tourism. For us, sustainable tourism consists of striving to offer a tourist experience that benefits as much as possible to all those who relate to us, as well as taking care of the environment.
We all are becoming more consicious about the need to get involved in small and large gestures to build a better destination, company and society. We also know that we have important challenges ahead that require a lot of effort and enthusiasm to successfully face them.
We will explain here some of the measures that we consider that are especially relevant to our way of working in a more sustainable way.
For example, in the field of Human Resources, we have a team that is 95% fixed. We do not contract through temporary employment agencies or outsource. Thus, we make sure to offer an excellent service -the illusion of finding a returning customer and, the customer’s illusion of being served by someone who already knows him or her- and offer safety to our team.
On the other hand, our way of designing the rooms and spaces, as well as the way we organize the work, prioritizes the comfort of the staff and the efficiency of the processes. An example of this would be our high beds to take care of the backs of waitresses and customers or the centralized vacuum system that avoids carrying weight and greatly facilitates floor cleaning process.
Main contributions to sustainable tourism: Our Buffet 24 hours, amenities and recycling
About our “amenities” we have chosen to offer them at client’s request.
This way avoid the unnecessary waste of plastic containers and product. We have also installed soap dispensers in all rooms for the same purpose.
In the line of contributing to the comfort of our customers and also to avoid the waste of food and the excessive use of packaging and plastic, in our “Buffet of snacks and drinks 24h” there are few individually packaged products.
Hotel Continental has completely eliminated beverage cans and bottles. The glasses and napkins are biodegradable, as well as most cleaning and laundry products.
Another important effort is to recycle all the products that are in our operations (glass, paper, plastic, toners, fluorescents, batteries …), and we take measures to make a more efficient and responsible use of water with sensors and flow reducers, as well as energy efficiency systems: lighting (led lights) and air conditioning temperature control.
We also want to share with you one of our projects that we carried out every year since 2014: the contribution to the Food Bank solidarity campaign to contribute to families with needs in Barcelona. You can find more information here.
Thank you very much for reading.
Please, give us your feedback, opinion and suggestions to help us make our hotels better for you and better for the world!
Our e-mail for contact here
