RIDGWAY, COLO.—The number of green lodging properties represented on the Environmentally Friendly Hotels website is being reduced dramatically as the owner raises the bar for inclusion. At one time there were more than 5,600 properties listed on the seven-year-old site. Today that number is closer to 2,500; it could soon dip to 1,500. Kit Cassingham, owner of Sage Blossom Consulting and owner of the website, says at one time a property needed to be doing just one of the 39 actions listed on her site in order to be included. Now the property must take at least 10 green steps. In addition, site participants must now post information on their green initiatives on their home pages and also link back to the Environmentally Friendly Hotels site.
“We feel that if you are going to be a truly green hotel you have to take a bold stand on it and make it an obvious part of your marketing and Web presence,” Cassingham said in an e-mail to those with properties represented on her site.
Lodging owners can submit their own properties for consideration to be included on the site. Travelers can also submit a property or review a hotel already on the site. Properties can earn from one to seven green trees based on the number of green steps they are taking. Some of the green choices include: towel and linen reuse program, composting, use green cleaning products, offer recycling, donate to charities, offer soap and shampoo in dispensers instead of amenity bottles, and practice water conservation. Those properties taking at least 27 of the action steps listed on the Environmentally Friendly Hotels site are highlighted on a separate site called “The Best Green Hotels.”
“To make this directory of green hotels most useful to travelers wanting green accommodations, we decided to delete those hotels that weren’t doing much to green their hotels,” Cassingham said in the aforementioned e-mail. “It was a tough decision for me to make to take these steps. But I sincerely feel that this is a better list than the one I started the year with. Urging hotels to take more green actions and to clearly communicate those actions with the public is what we are striving for. We hope this succeeds, even a little. This isn’t just another hotel reservation site with a green facade.”
Glenn Hasek can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.
