Crescent Hotels & Resorts pilots sustainable hotel experience with plastic-free and refill amenities

Grove Collaborative Holdings, a sustainable consumer products company, has partnered with hotel management company Crescent Hotels & Resorts. The brands are developing “Beyond Plastic Stay,” a pilot “sustainable hotel experience,” at a number of properties across the US, in which sustainable packaging designs and systems will be used for personal care products.

Individual rooms have been updated at a number of Crescent Hotels & Resorts locations, with an assortment of sustainable products to reduce the environmental impact of each hotel stay. These include personal care and home products that prioritize refill systems, bamboo paper and sustainable packaging materials.

Guests will be able to select the “Beyond Plastic Stay” option when reserving a room at any of the participating properties across all booking platforms, similar to selecting a King Size or Double Queen room, starting at a US$50 premium. The guest journey also comprises multiple education touchpoints to help guests learn about sustainable swaps to incorporate into their home routines.

“By using refill systems and products that opt for more sustainable packaging materials than single-use plastic, each guest that opts into the Beyond Plastic Stay saves approximately 50 standard sized water bottles worth of single-use plastic,” highlight the partners.

“[Due to] the nature of tourism operations, the scale needed for high turnover rooms, and general consumer expectations and behaviors around hospitality makes [sustainability] more challenging. This is especially true when considering there are few options for hotel stays that have sustainability in mind, especially as it relates to single-use plastic waste.”

The new program also makes use of cleaning products from Grove Co., For Good and Seventh Generation to make preparing rooms for guests more sustainable, while similarly prioritizing refill systems and opting out of single-use plastic items.

Guests are increasingly plastic-conscious

The partners highlight that the average US citizen is increasingly aware of the environmental impact of their actions and the general state of pollution, especially regarding plastic.

According to their findings, 85% of citizens surveyed think that plastic waste pollution is a serious and concerning problem, and one in three say they’ve reduced how much plastic they’re using. Meanwhile, 83% of travelers confirm sustainable travel is important to them.

The US state of Illinois recently announced an upcoming ban on hotels from using small, single-use plastic bottles containing personal care products starting next summer. Governor Pritzker signed the Small Single-Use Plastic Bottle Act into law. The restriction first applies to hotels with 50 or more rooms and by January 2026, all hotels are expected to abide by the law.

The trend is reflected abroad, where in Europe, a recent report revealed that 80% of reusable packaging solutions boast return rates above 75%, while 65% of the solutions operating in the retail sector have reached profitability. With the reuse industry showing such strong potential, industry stakeholders tell Packaging Insights they are optimistic about Europe’s circular economy and sustainability efforts.