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India’s First GreenOtels Award Announced

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MUMBAI, INDIA—India’s first GreenOtels Awards have been announced. The Awards are envisioned to solely give recognition to India’s most sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible hotels.

The Awards were given to hotels and resorts in four categories—Extra Large Hotel Category (250 rooms and above), Large category (120 rooms up to 250), Medium category (60 rooms to 120 rooms) and the Small category (up to 60 rooms).

The GreenOtels Awards are determined by an eminent Jury of Experts who have and are working closely with the hotel industry and carry with them high caliber of qualification and experience in the space of sustainability, ecodesign, engineering as well as project and building management.

While ranking the hotels the jury looked at three kinds of recognition:

Gold—visionary; beyond regulatory requirements and current best practice;
Silver—best in class of regulatory requirements and good practice; and
Bronze—next in class of regulatory requirements and good practice.

Two Properties Earn Gold

Only two properties made it to the Gold—Pragati Green Meadows & Resorts from Telangana in the Medium category (60 rooms to 120 rooms) and Evolve Back Kabini from Karnataka in the Small Format category (up to 60 rooms).

In the Extra-Large category (250+ rooms) Taj Krishna, Hyderabad bagged the Silver and there was no Gold announced in this category; in the Large category also (120 to 250 rooms) Novotel, Pune bagged the Silver and there was no Gold announced in this category.

However, 40 hotels and resorts were shortlisted from a huge list of applicants out of which another 11 hotels including The Imperial Delhi, ITC Maurya—Delhi, Taj West End—Bengaluru, Jasminn—Goa, Lalit—Jaipur etc. bagged the Bronze.

This is the first time in the country that hotels and resorts were recognized for eco-friendly practices.

Those Focused on Sustainability Highlighted

The Founder of GreenOtels, Minakshi Agarwal (also the MD of H&FS—the country’s foremost hospitality media company for over three decades) is clear that, “The idea behind the GreenOtels Award is not to pinpoint who is the best but to highlight and to encourage all those hoteliers who have sustainability as a part of their business agenda.”

She further elaborated, “The GreenOtels recognition will be given to hotels that demonstrate leadership in one or more of the following five eligibility criteria areas: energy; water; waste; community; and workplace and is open to all hotels and resorts having keys from under 60 to over 250.”

GreenOtels started its journey 18 months ago going city to city meeting hundreds of hoteliers in the GreenOtels conferences advocating “Responsible Hoteliering” and bringing together some of the best minds from the industry and the government. In doing so GreenOtels was ably supported by the city hotel associations and GSTC (Global Sustainable Tourism Council). To further advance the cause of triple bottom line (people, planet and profit), GreenOtels then announced its calls for entries for the 2018 GreenOtels Award.

“We were overwhelmed with the response we received and from across the country,” says Minakshi Agarwal. “It is truly heartening to see the effort and commitment to being a responsible hotel coming from such a diverse range of properties located not only in business metros but in remote locations like Coorg, Chikmaglur, Cuttack and Amritsar.”

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