MCALLEN, TEXAS—The McAllen Chamber of Commerce is stepping up its efforts to green hotels in its southern Texas location by adding a second tier to its Green Hotel Program. Participants in the first tier of the voluntary program are required to implement a minimum of eight practices from a long list provided by the Chamber. After a year of participating in the program, hotels are visited as part of a verification step to ensure they are indeed doing what they said they are doing. The second tier will be for those hotels that have completed one year in the program and that wish to take additional steps to green their operations. According to Nancy Millar, vice president/director for the McAllen Convention and Visitors Bureau, criteria for the second tier will be finalized in the next couple of months.
“Eventually, we will have a third tier,” Millar says.
Launched about six years ago, the Chamber’s Green Hotel Program encourages hotels to support environmentally friendly practices that reduce the amount of waste, water and energy generated by hotel staff and guests. Some of the steps hotels can take include: switching to native plants in garden areas, providing recycling containers in guestrooms, switching to low-flow toilets or toilet-tank fill diverters, and creating a green team to carry out green activities.
Fourteen hotels are currently participating in the Green Hotel Program—about half of those eligible to participate. Five Marriotts are currently participating. The others represent Hilton, Choice Hotels International, Accor and the InterContinental Hotels Group.
The program is voluntary and participants benefit not only from reduced costs but also from a presence in the Green Hotels section of the McAllen Convention and Visitors Bureau website. According to the Chamber, it will promote participating hotels when soliciting nature-related tourism and meetings and convention business.
Millar says the Green Hotel Program is unique in that it is run by a convention and visitors bureau. McAllen joins cities such as Buffalo (N.Y.) and Los Angeles in having green hotel programs. To view a complete list of states, cities and regions that have green lodging programs, click here.
Glenn Hasek can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.
