Hot Topic: Environmentally Friendly Hotels
Green Travelers Now Have More Green Hotel Choices
Ridgway, Colo., Aug. 6, 2007 - A quick glance at newspapers and magazines shows "green" is the in color. But consumers are starting to demand that the hospitality industry be less wasteful too.
Environmentally friendly hotels are getting lots of coverage in publications like the New York Times, MSNBC, Newsweek, the Washington Post and USA Today, and on the Today Show. It's hard to know when driving by whether a hotel is green or wasteful, and no newspaper or magazine can list them all. That's where the internet comes in -- the number one website for travelers to find environmentally friendly hotels, http//www.EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com, now has well over 2,600 hotels in its easy-to-search data base, and the number is growing weekly.
"Travelers had called me repeatedly to ask which hotels have adopted green practices, especially catering to chemically sensitive people," said Kit Cassingham, founder of EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com. "When I couldn't find an association with a green hotel membership to partner with me on providing that sort of information, I decided to start from scratch. I started Environmentally Friendly Hotels in January 2005."
EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com is the leading online research tool for green hotels around the world and the environmental practices they have implemented. The increasing number of articles about green travel and eco- tourism shows the interest in the subject is growing. The kinds of articles being published cover topics like how to find environmentally friendly hotels, green hotel building practices, how hotel chains are adopting environmental operations/principles, and even the green habits of travelers.
Not only does Cassingham's site have more hotels listed than any other, no other site enumerates the specific green practices hotels have implemented. Information is gleaned from the hotels' websites, from what the management reports, and what people who stay there observe and share with on the EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com site. The public and peer pressure keep the hotels honest about their environmental commitment and practices.
With over 2,500 hotels, travelers can search by location, choosing among 26 green and sustainable-practice criteria that matter to them, as well as four other business criteria (such as whether it has high-speed internet access) to find a hotel that suits their needs.
Cassingham brings over 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry to her site. A member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, she works with hotels and other hospitality properties on customer service and marketing, as well as advise them how to be more environmentally friendly -- her University of Colorado degree is in Environmental Conservation.
"The website brings my main two passions together," Cassingham says: "Hospitality and the environment. That helped me see where the modern green movement was going, and to get the site online well before this became a hot topic." Plus, she says, it gives publications a place to point their readers who want to leave smaller footprints when they travel.