Green travel ideas from two environmentally conscious travelers

The Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Award Winners for 2009 were announced on Nov 11 at the World Travel Market.

Whale Watch Kaikoura, from New Zealand, was judged to be the overall winner.

Here’s the full list of winners:-

Overall winner - Whale Watch Kaikoura, New Zealand
Best tour operator for cultural engagement - Village Ways, India
Best large hotel / accommodation - YHA Wellington City, New Zealand
Best small hotel / accommodation - Rivertime Resort and Ecolodge, Laos
Best low carbon transport & technology - Alcatraz Cruises, US
Best in a mountain environment  - Upland Escapes, UK
Best in a marine environment - Whale Watch Kaikoura, New Zealand
Best cruise or ferry operator - Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, US
Best for poverty reduction - Guludo Beach Lodge, Mozambique
Best for conservation of wildlife & habitats - Great Plains Conservation, South Africa
Best for conservation of cultural heritage - Selena Travel LLC, Mongolia
Best volunteering organisation - People and Places, UK
Best destination  - City of Cape Town, South Africa
Best personal contribution - Gavin Bate, Founder of Adventure Alternative and the Moving Mountains Trust

For more details, visit www.responsibletourismawards.com/; Photo courtesy Whale Watch Kaikoura

Don’t let any mental pictures of LA’s summer smog cloud your thinking about the city’s commitment to environmentally friendly hotel options. In fact, LA is making many good green choices, and the eco-friendly Hotel Palomar is only one example. The Palomar has a program in place called EarthCare which puts to use over 40 eco-friendly practices in and around the hotel. For example, their website lists:

*  In-room recycling bins
* Energy efficient lighting
* Water efficient fixtures
* Toiletries made from natural ingredients by earth-friendly manufacturers
* Organic food and beverage options in our mini bars
* The restaurant adjacent to our hotel follows the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch’s sustainable seafood guidelines
* We are a 100% non-smoking hotel

I found it particularly interesting that this hotel works with an environmentally friendly restaurant - overfishing our oceans is a large problem, and it’s inspiring to see a hotel and a restaurant working together on this front.

These efforts resulted in the hotel being awarded the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership award by the California Environmental Protection Agency.

The hotel itself is beautiful and classy - don’t neglect to check out the artwork before you leave; it provides an interesting reflection on the area’s Hollywood scene.

Photo: Todd Jones Photography

As re-reported by Bnet.com, Oklahoma has unveiled a series - seven, to be exact - of sustainable travel programs designed to meet the growing needs of consumers interested in sustainable and eco-friendly lodging and travel options. I found this article to be interesting on a number of fronts, including this statistic:

“…U.S. Travel Association research shows that 51 percent of consumers would continue to patronize sustainable travel service suppliers regardless of an economic downturn, and 48 percent said continued support of sustainable travel is a necessity.”

51% is an astonishingly high number to me, and it’s encouraging.

The article highlights the potential partnership between Oklahoma’s Colcord Hotel and Clean the World,   non-profit which provides third-world countries with “gently used” hygiene products like soap and shampoo from hotels around the world.

It appears as though a major push to increase recycling will be the first component of these sustainable travel programs. This is a good first step, and it will be interesting to see what the next steps will be. We’ll have to wait for feedback from the programs to determine how these efforts are being received and what new efforts will be made in the future.

Photo: Serge Melki

Key West, Florida is a green town - literally. There are ten green properties, including the LEED certified Weather Forecast Office. Four of these properties have complete something known as the iStayGreen audit. According to this audit, the Doubletree Grand Key Resort in Key West is well on its way to LEED certification - it qualified for the 3 Green Leaf Eco Rating (out of 5 leaves).

In order to qualify for this rating, the resort had to prove that it complied with over 70 eco-initiatives, and the more of these initiatives are met, the more “leaves” the hotel is awarded.

Here’s a short list of some of the efforts this hotel is making to make the property more environmentally friendly:

- Guest rooms air conditioning units automatically turn off when doors are open

-  Shower heads conform to most updated low-flow guidelines

-  Fluorescent lighting is used throughout the property

-  Pool furniture is made out of recyclable materials

- Complimentary shuttle service to multiple locations reduces the number of cars which are used on the island

And more!

Photo: Milan.boer

Traveling with a pooch? As someone who does often, I was interested to see that Loews hotels, already known for their green policies and commitment to the environment, are now offering a “Grrreen Dog” package.

Rates start at $119/night, but the actual rate depends on the hotel you choose.

What might this include? Well, you get a specially crafted room service meal for your pet which contains ingredients that all come from local farms. Vet-approved, of course, so your night in the hotel room with them won’t be a bad one.  You also get a 100% organic cotton bandanna made by Doggie Go Green as well as a Zogoflex Huck dog toy, which is apparently not only indestructible, but it floats and bounces, too. This seems to be a very hand toy to have in a hotel room when you leave your pet alone; coming back to a chewed up bed or sofa would be a touch stressful.

Cute? Yes. But on a more serious and significant note, this program is just another way that this hotel chain is demonstrating their commitment to making every part of their guests services more environmentally friendly. It would be easy to provide low-grade dog food and toys made out of non-biodegradable materials. But, Loews went the extra mile, and I like that.

You can book this package until December 19, 2009.

Back from an all-too-long hiatus, and I wanted to recommend a new site that really ties into a lot of things we’ve tried to do with SimpleGreenChoices. It’s WholeTravel, a new website that’s trying to integrate environmental criteria into travelers’ decision-making process. For example, check out this page devoted to the Lapa Rios Eco Lodge in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. There is an overview of the property as a whole, as well as a list of amenities, while there’s a whole separate section listing the hotel’s sustainability practices. If the biggest hurdle to making more environmentally-friendly travel decisions is lack of information, then this site could be a big part of the solution.

WholeTravel is starting mainly with ecotourism properties in Central America and planning to build out from there. If anyone reading this post owns a hotel/resort/accommodation that fits the Whole Travel profile, you can send them an e-mail requesting a self-evaluation questionnaire and start the process of getting listed on their site.

Before I get to the substance of my post, I want to remind our readers that today is Blog Action Day, an annual event when thousands of bloggers get together to weigh in on the same topic. This year, the topic is the environment. Well done, selection committee! We’re all too happy to participate.

OK, so now let me explain my post title. I was intrigued a couple of weeks ago to see that Ecuador had used the Clinton Global Initiative as a forum to announce their plans NOT to drill for one billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The announcement was a fascinating and quite unexpected commitment from a country that could really use those oil dollars. President Correa of Ecuador announced that they would commit investment to renewable energy instead, and then the last sentence of the press release reads: “The plan also includes promotion of ecotourism and sustainable development for Ecuador’s Amazonian region.”

I have two reactions to this:

1) Wow. If Ecuador, a country that has a per capita income of 4,500 can look past it’s immediate economic needs and toward a more sustainable long-term growth model, why can’t we do the same thing in the U.S. - where per-capita wealth is more than 10 times larger? I mean, seriously!

2) More importantly, I think this story is all about travel, and the press release buried the lede. Ecuador sees an opportunity to expand on its already substantial ecotourism business and become the Costa Rica of South America with both a strong nature-based tourism draw and a significant portfolio of renewable energy. And to get back to my creative terminology, this is the “sticky green residue” left behind by all of those tourists who visited the Galapagos recently. I say “sticky,” because all those tourist dollars spent in Ecuador over the years have lodged in the mind of government officials and made them realize that they have too much to lose if they permit drilling to go forward.

Here’s a concrete example of how travel can make a net positive impact on the world’s environment.

So don’t be ashamed for taking that overseas trip. Find those “simple green choices” that you can make to reduce your travel’s environmental impact, but also take heart that you could be doing the world a lot of good by making other countries appreciate the power of the tourist dollar. That might just be the incentive they need to conserve their natural resources.

Disagree with me about Ecuador’s oil or the benefits of tourism? Leave a comment below or send us an e-mail at simplegreenchoices@gmail.com.