june 2007
the lowe down
A recent issue of Conde Nast Traveler magazine had a feature on ‘The Power Of Travel’ featuring ways you can help local communities when staying in resort hotels around the world.
With luxury resorts opening in more and more countries, many of them under developed, the luxury experience is increasingly being shared with the third world experience: the road down to your six star resort passes through a run down village; fifty meters down the pristine beach, another under developed village.
The Harmony Hotel in Costa Rica is helping animals, actually turles, who nest on the beach in Costa Rica. Increasing numbers of hotels like the Harmony (www.harmonynosara.com) are popping up around the world, fostering community and environmental projects to make the world a better place.
So when you book your summer travel, what can you do?
Conde Nast lists seven questions to ask your hotel:
Do you have a formal social responsibility policy that you share with guests and suppliers?
Do you track your environmental impact and set goals for improvement?
Do you offer linen and towel reuse options?
Do you have a recycling program?
Do you use compact fluorescent lightbulbs in your rooms?
Do you hire locally, and do you have a training program?
Do you try to buy from suppliers who pay fair wages?
Not all guests are going to tear themselves away from their spa treatment to check if there is a training program, or delay that trip to the buffet table to check if the seafood served is environmentally sound. In fact, a recent hotel survey showed that the majority of people chuck their environmental commitment the second they check in, running air conditioners all day, wasting food, and more…..
Over 70% of viewers said they supported hotels that had a hand in developing local communities. So why the disparity in the attitude versus the actual?
With talk heating up about global warming, it is time to change our habits while at home and on the road. Asking the above questions will probably met with confusion, even derision, by many hotel staff, more eager to please distant owners with balance sheets and profits than helping kids have a better future.
Though hotel guests are often un eco conscious, the tide is changing.
It has to be.