Two important occasions and great opportunities for your properties are coming up in March and April—Earth Hour on March 25 at 8:30 p.m. local time and Earth Day on April 22. Please write to me at greenlodgingnews@gmail.com to tell me what you are planning. Since its beginnings in 2007, Earth Hour has been known for the “lights off” moment, with individuals from around the globe switching off their lights to show symbolic support for the planet and to raise awareness of the environmental issues affecting it. Hotels and hotel companies around the world have been participating for years. Last year for...

LOS ANGELES—Just in time for National Plan for Vacation Day on January 31, the first statewide regenerative travel program launched with Visit California & Kind Traveler, sharing a wave of new opportunities for travelers to make a positive impact in the communities they visit while unlocking exclusive offers from more than 58 iconic hotels across 12 destinations in the Golden State—with 38 brand-new hotels and impact opportunities for 2023.  With more than 97 percent of travelers revealing it’s important for their vacation dollars to positively impact the communities they visit (Kind Traveler 2022 Impact Tourism Report), and 55 percent of Americans forfeiting vacation days each...

BETHESDA, MD.—In just three months since launching the MDO (myDigitalOffice) Sustainability Calculator and Certification, 15 hotel management companies comprising more than 1,500 hotels have qualified, and their collective efforts are saving 743 trees and 134 cubic feet of landfill waste annually. The MDO Sustainability Certification was launched in November 2022 as a way to shine the spotlight on hotel owners and operators dedicated to reducing their environmental footprint, and its rapid adoption demonstrates the industry’s accelerated action around ESG efforts. Companies such as Crestline Hotels & Resorts, Commonwealth Hotels, Remington Hotels, McNeill Hotel Company, and Apple REIT have received certification....

Our industry has a lot of all stars who come up with great ideas. I spoke with one of them this past week. His name is Floris Licht, and he is the full-time General Manager of the DoubleTree by Hilton Amsterdam Centraal Station. He has an impressive side gig: He is Chief Planting Officer for Hotels for Trees, a nonprofit that has planted more than 105,000 trees since the program launched in July 2021. That is quite a patch of trees. What Hotels for Trees offers is an alternative for those hotels that incentivize guests to opt out of housekeeping...

Euronews just released its 2023 Travel Trend Report. Almost all the trends touch on sustainability or wellness in one way or another. First on the list is regenerative travel—nature positive and carbon positive travel. “Tour operators, destination bodies and hotels are tasked with the job of actively repairing, restoring and investing in nature, in order to keep pace with consumer sentiment,” the report says. Third on the list is Rail Revival. Driving the return to this form of travel is the convenience, cost and lower carbon footprint. “A handful of private companies are reviving night trains across Europe,” the report says....

ODESSA, FLA.—Green Lodging News has added Christie & Co. to the “Strategic Branding, Design and PR” section of its Green Product & Service Directory. Christie & Co, an award-winning full-service global growth agency specializing in strategic branding, PR, market research, and advertising, has been guiding ethical brands from Dream to Mainstream since 1992. In their three decades in business, Christie & Co has helped companies realize or refresh their mission, visions and values and integrated these into results-oriented branding and PR. The agency has forged such a pathway in building brands that almost every player in ethically minded industries...

NORTH TAHOE, NEV.—Late last year, Fodor’s published its 2023 “No List”—the places travelers should avoid in the new year. Included on the list was Lake Tahoe, a place where Fodor’s says “nature needs a break” primarily because of the effect that sediment and emissions from heavy traffic have on the lake’s clarity. According to The Mercury News, “The Fodors article quoted Andy Chapman, President and CEO of Travel North Tahoe Nevada (TNTNV) as saying tourism and hospitality leaders are trying to find ‘creative solutions to take cars off the road’ without telling people to stay away.” With 15 million visitors...

INTERNATIONAL REPORT—Broadly speaking, the success of a destination is judged by the number of visitors it welcomes in each time frame. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, destinations are, in general, more determined than ever to attract large numbers of tourists, which is why our Most Visited Destinations report focuses on the year’s most-visited destinations. However, more is not always better, and it is important to remember the issues of overtourism many destinations were facing before the global health crisis emerged. In fact, as more and more global regions approach full travel recovery, the topic of overtourism once again...

On a typical day in the U.S., there are thousands of requests for emergency shelter that are unmet. There are different reasons folks need such housing—domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, and other crimes. Fortunately, an increasing number of hotel companies are stepping up to provide rooms for those victims in need through the Safe Stays by ReloShare alliance. According to ReloShare, there are now more than 13,000 hotels participating. A big supporter of ReloShare has been Choice Hotels International, which, as of January 10, had more than six thousand U.S. hotels activated with ReloShare to provide safe housing solutions. Choice...

BUENOS AIRES—What do 20,000 trees look like? For one, spaced evenly, 20,000 trees would cover more than 32 football fields. Planting 20,000 native trees by August 2023 has become a passion for the team at Say Hueque Argentina Journeys, Argentina’s leading sustainable adventure tour operator. Owner Rafa Mayer has led the company towards an epically ambitious carbon negative, climate positive response to the climate emergency, through the pandemic up to now. Among other efforts, they have already planted more than 5,000 trees in damaged zones of Patagonia to help restore native forests and are rapidly heading towards their goal. Say...