A Rotorua hotel has hit the refresh button, spending “several million dollars” on an upgrade planned pre-Covid, and has gathered momentum now that visitor numbers are back to “normal levels”.
The Millennium Hotel Rotorua has completed a full refurbishment of 99 out of 227 rooms beginning with the carpet and extending to soft furnishings and bathrooms inspired by the colours of the Central Plateau.
The Rotorua Daily Post was invited to have a sneak peek.
General manager Pipiana Whiston said burnt oranges were accented with blue to represent Rotorua’s surrounding natural environment, and she was particularly proud of the “bespoke” photography highlighting local scenery.
She said the local points of interest on walls in the refreshed rooms created a point of difference.
Planned before Covid, a mock room was set up in 2019. Affected by lockdown restrictions, the hotel was forced to split the project into two stages.
“Stage two will be complete by the end of the first quarter next year,” Whiston said.
Costing “several million dollars” the project was always about more than just rooms. It included “equipment behind the scenes, which no one gets to see, but it helps improve our efficiencies”, Whiston said.
“No one knew what was going to be happening in the world so we decided to just run with half the hotel and make sure that everything was increasing and evolving.”
The high season for the hotel is from October to April and this year operations will “pretty much be back at normal levels in terms of demand within the business”.
“We’ve seen a 70% return in visitation over this high season just gone, in terms of numbers coming through to the region, which is great,” Whiston said.
She said some of the furnishings had come to the “end of a cycle” and “it was time to refresh it and start again”. The last refurbishment was done in 2005.
Operations manager Carl Bennett said the hotel on Hinemaru St held a gold environmental standard through Qualmark and was a founding and current member of the Rotorua Sustainable Charter.
Sustainability practices were high on the hotel’s priority list.
An audit of food waste was included in the multi-million dollar renovation and an assessment of their sustainability practices through the charter was conducted last year.
Whiston said charter coordinator Desirae Kirby delivered a full-staff briefing as a result.
It was “really beneficial”, Whiston said.
“Staff get to understand a little bit more that what we do here does impact the wider community and the environment.
“We’re not just putting a recycle bin in because that’s the theme of the week for everyone,” Whiston said.
Progress and sustainability education for staff and guests included removing travel-sized bottles and installing reusable big bottle amenities in the bathrooms.
Bennett said small changes made a huge difference and allowed the hotel an opportunity to lead by example.
“We’ve taken the opportunity to sort of look at how our waste flow is in there,” Bennett said.
The audit found “80% of the rubbish that was being removed from our guest rooms was brought into the hotel by the guest,” Whiston said.
“They empty all the rubbish out of their car into the bag and dump it in our room in the rubbish bin.
“Food, shopping waste, etc. A lot of it is not what we’re producing here.
“So we’ve introduced guest recycling cupboards on each floor, right next to the elevator.
“We’re not doing the oversell but trying to do little reminders for the guests that help us on our journey”.
Whiston said the kitchen aimed to produce no waste.
Bennett said Ecogas in Reporoa took the hotel’s food waste and turned it into biofuel - repurposing it elsewhere.
Whiston said : “All of our waste is measured we track it to make sure that we’re making improvements.
“So where we can we’re obviously reviewing everything that we do and, you know, it’s an ongoing process.
“So we track it to make sure that we’re making improvements and we’re taking on other suggestions in terms of best practice and modifying the way we do our business, and still making gains.”.
The initiatives have drawn praise from visitors.
“We deal with international too and there’s still a lot of people that come through and they’re just like, wow, that’s so cool that you do that here - they don’t think about [recycling] themselves,” Bennett said.
The hotel is trying to partner up with someone to help recycle soft plastics on a commercial scale, Bennett said.
“Our efforts here are flowing on to the guests but also the staff.
“What are you doing at home?
“If it means that half our staff are recycling better because they recycle here and they’re used to it. It’s a big improvement,” Bennett said.
This article has been corrected to include: The correct spelling of the hotel’s name - The Millennium Hotel Rotorua; clarifying that bathrooms were included in the refurbishment; the hotel’s last refurbishment was in 2005; the colours used in the rooms were burnt orange and blue; the correct name of the Rotorua Sustainable Charter.
A final correction, which was the result of incorrect information provided to the reporter, is that the food waste from Ecogas in Reporoa was turned into biofuel and repurposed elsewhere.