Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is the largest luxury hotel company in North America, with a portfolio of 56 hotels around the world. The company also enjoys an international reputation as an environmental leader in the industry. Guided by its Green Partnership Program, an environmental initiative pioneered by its Canadian properties in 1990, the company received two prestigious awards in 2006 alone: the Global Tourism Business Award and the Worldwide Hospitality Award for Best Corporate Responsibility Program. National Geographic Traveler has claimed that that Fairmont Hotel and Resorts has “the most comprehensive environmental program in the North American hotel industry, and the Green Partnership Program’s Green Partnership Guide has been endorsed by world-renowned environmental activist Dr. David Suzuki.

The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is located in the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Banff, Alberta. The hotel actively supports Fairmont’s commitment to environmental awareness and action, and has already implemented an impressive list of green initiatives ranging from the use of biodiesel to offering “green cuisine” in the hotel’s restaurants and dining rooms. Not content with these initiatives alone, in 2007, Banff Springs Hotel asked The Natural Step to help develop a program to bring long-term integrated sustainability planning to the hotel.

The program was designed to establish a culture of sustainability planning and action at the hotel while capitalizing on the short- and mid-term commercial advantages of running a sustainable business. It trained its senior hotel managers and other designated employees in The Natural Step Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development and helped them use this training to develop a sustainability vision, policy and action plan.

During the summer of 2008, the hotel’s executive team approved the new vision and policy, which calls for  “… Providing treasured mountain memories on our way to a sustainable future.” To that end, the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel has committed to working towards a future in which, among other things, it will use only renewable energy sources, be carbon neutral, produce zero waste, influence its supply chain to become more sustainable, and purchase as much as possible from local and regional suppliers. The sustainability policy commits the hotel to preparing and implementing an annual action plan that includes objectives, actions, and internal progress indicators. The hotel's first action plan, drawing from a list of over 60 possible actions, will be implemented over the course of 2009.