As Crystalbrook Collection expands across Australia, their three Cairns-based properties lead the way on their mantra “travel with a lighter footprint”.
Crystalbrook Collection
The original properties of the new hotel portfolio – Crystalbrook Riley, Crystalbrook Bailey and Crystalbrook Flynn – epitomise the need to rethink what exactly a delegate needs when travelling for a business event.
Each hotel and resort carries an authentic expression of its location. Add in playful designs, #ResponsibleLuxury initiatives, a stimulating environment and a passion for fun, and you have a uniquely enriching delegate experience.
The Responsible Luxury hashtag, used by Crystalbrook Collection is their promise to embrace environmental change to enhance, not compromise, the quality of their guest experiences.
Different from the get-go
Likely your delegate’s first encounter with Crystalbrook Collection’s environmental policy starts from the minute they check-in (paperless of course), as groups are handed a wooden key card to access rooms. Made from 100% recycled wood, these key card access tokens are the first clue that a Cairns & Great Barrier Reef business event experience is starting in the means it intends to carry on.
The hotel’s design is efficient
Conscious travel was built into Crystalbrook Collection’s construction; engineered to ensure the building reduced excess energy through its design and shape. The internal Building Management System ensures all rooms across the three properties sit at the same temperature and uses smart technology. From the moment a delegate checks in the air conditioning cranks up and they’ll walk into a cool room. Equally it works in reverse too, when the sensors recognise delegates have left for their plenary session, the air conditioning switches off to conserve energy.
Paperless is a promise
Crystalbrook Collection dial up their tech to cut down on paper; with in-room iPads they’ve removed around 90% of the paper found in a typical five-star hotel room. That’s not to say there isn’t a little notepad to jot down your thoughts in your room from a busy day of conferencing – these are five-star properties – but instead of bleached–paper, delegates will find recycled Forest Stewardship Council paper stock only. In fact, the coat hangers in each of the rooms are made from 100% pressed cardboard as well.
Optional housekeeping
The housekeeping team is in on the sustainable action too; opt-out of your scheduled daily room clean and they’ll reward you with a $10 food and beverage voucher. A delegate can sleep in sheets twice in return for an Aperol Spritz or two!
You’re unlikely to see a single-use plastic, anywhere
Crystalbrook Collection say (a very loud) ‘no’ to single-use plastic with no plastic straws, plastic water bottles, or single-use plastic bathroom amenity bottles anywhere onsite. In a year of operation, utilising boxed water saves more than half a million plastic water bottles going straight into landfill. And by replacing small, single-use toiletries with large amenity bottles, one of the hotel’s alone is able to keep a quarter of a million bottles out of landfill each year.
Food miles have been sliced and diced
One of the perks of having an 85,000 acre cattle station within the Crystalbrook Collection, is paddock to plate isn’t just a marketing philosophy, but a restaurant reality with all beef products sourced from their very own farm. All beef used across the group’s restaurants feature farmed beef from Crystalbrook Station, located three hours from Cairns. 35,000 head of cattle is raised and grazed under the Tropical North Queensland sun. The hotel group’s commitment to reducing food miles goes further though – with a guarantee that at least 80% of all ingredients served across the menu comes from within a 3.5-hour radius of Cairns.
Produce is used as efficiently as possible
Food miles are one thing, but food waste is another, which is why Crystalbrook Collection designs its menus to reduce as much food waste as possible. Take the use of a pineapple for instance. Delegates might find the juice of the pineapple served at breakfast, the leaves in a cocktail come sundown and a modern-Asian dinner dished up inside a pineapple skin bowl for the gala dinner. Where food waste does exist, it’s swiftly sent off with OzHarvest to be distributed to those in most need.