I t is easier than some people think to find hotels that suit their climate travels. Of course you can feel encouraged if hotel websites are overt about climate action on their home page.
You can also assume that talk about wellness, especially combined with vague references to community stakeholders and sustainability, shows avoidance.
One high end cluster of European boutique properties, Maisons Pariente, says they’re “in perfect symbiosis with their environment.” This could easily mean with their arrondisements. Nice, but are they even striving for climate neutral?
We shouldn’t be surprised when, as buyers of travel, we often hear commentators point out that even when we want to do the right thing, we often feel confused.
Floridians may know about legendary landowner-financier Edward Ball, whose motto was “confusion to the enemy.” He fitted an intimate and affordable wilderness property of 27 rooms alongside Wakulla Springs that he found too beautiful to desecrate. The site today is a state park 14 miles below Tallahassee on the National Register of Historic Places. After 85 years, the park recycles plastic and glass but doesn’t talk about climate action.
You can’t always tell a book by its cover
It’s about the 105-year-old Broadmoor in Colorado Springs that my writer colleague weighs in. Some of you may know of Veronica Stoddart as the retired longtime travel editor of USA Today. I know her from the mid-’80s, when she launched Caribbean Travel and Life, where others and I could write about cottage-scaled vacations in places like Bluefields and its vicinity on Jamaica’s southwestern shore. That was before Negril had its first motel.
Today she is a high-in-demand scribe for destination and hotel clients around the world. I wanted to know about iconic hotels like the Broadmoor, where I had vacationed as a child, if her clients asked for climate content.
“They never ask,” Ronny told me.
But then she told me that while Broadmoor’s home page right away talks about wellness, a site search will reveal six pages of detail about climate action deep into menu options about resort policies sandwiched between Pet Policy and Dress Policy, where the heading reads Green Initiatives. Six pages of small print follow about energy use, waste generation, water use, social impact, volunteerism, major sports facilities, food and beverage, and spa.
You learn that energy efficiencies save 9,646 barrels of crude oil and 2,519 tons of coal a year that electric power plants will not burn. Beneficial impacts reach the annual equivalent of eliminating pollution from 750 cars or planting 1,554 trees. Used tennis balls have become bumpers on walkers of the elderly, toys for Humane Society dogs, and raw art materials in schools.
The resort also publishes a brochure about its climate work that you can review online — it’s called Sustainability at the Broadmoor.
If you’re like me
You browse links embedded in sites you like. I was first surprised to learn that the wealthy owner of the Broadmoor, committed to climate actions there, had also acquired the 95-year-old (The) Cloister on Sea Island, Georgia. But there, not a word about climate adaptation.
So, it’s easy to find what appear to be inconsistencies, which further lead to confusion.
But wait a minute.
Ronny points to her client Xanterra, a multi-pronged company that operates lodges in many U.S. national parks. The lodges are all about climate action. As you may know, for the first time in their history both the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service are run by Native Americans; the Department by Deb Haaland, and NPS by Charles F. Sams III. Ronny’s narratives are all over the Xanterra website.
But anomaly again.
One of the Xanterra affiliates is the tour operator Holiday Travel. Not a word about climate action.
But about this case, Ronny says it’s a new acquisition. “It takes time to do the kind of research that the urge to incorporate climate action into newly acquired businesses can be turned around.”
For the most part, Xanterra holdings communicate indirectly about climate moves. The Hopi House next to El Tovar Hotel at the rim of Grand Canyon National Park, a National Historic Landmark (the oldest of 7 lodges at the park), has been offering authentic Native American arts and crafts to visitors for almost 125 years.
Xanterra’s affiliate VBT (Vermont Bicycle Touring) “lead[s] you into the magic of local life” that I can attest to when I worked with a host of VBT tours that crossed the farmlands of St. Johns County, Florida past potato and cabbage fields, small farming communities, and the St. Johns River.
Its Country Walkers affiliate highlights that “There’s something about breaking bread with local hosts that gets you to the heart of a place.”
Green initiatives, if not talk about climate action
Ronny tells me by phone that “At a time when globetrotters are increasingly choosing eco-friendly trips in an effort to reduce their footprint on earth, Xanterra is well poised to meet this moment.” She cites pollution controls, water conservation, transitioning to renewable energy “and fighting climate change” that have earned Xanterra 42 green awards or certifications.
One of Ronny’s narratives tells about “Feeding shriveled apples to Grand Canyon mules. Operating a railway on French fry oil. Slicing a cruise ship in half to add an insert.”
She tells me that the all-Inclusive Sandals Resorts that privatized miles of beaches in an early acquisition near Bluefields, now in its second generation of hospitality leans toward sustainability across the Caribbean by having introduced the replacement of costly food imports through incentives for local farmers, by start-up composting projects, planting trees, and recycling fishing nets sourced from the ocean and recycled plastic waste into soccer goals for schoolchildren. Options exist for meals at local restaurants. Yet a review of websites still shows that all-inclusive means all-exclusive except for excursions that get billed with added fees.
Yet clear breakthroughs
Ronny updates me about the Norwegian cruise line Hurtigruten, with which she sailed to Antarctica, for having launched its first environmentally upgraded battery-hybrid powered ship last year and working towards its first zero-emission ship by 2030. Notwithstanding, it was Lindblad Expeditions, started in 1958, that introduced the first expedition cruise to adopt 100% carbon neutral practices in 2019.
Additionally, Lindblad together with National Geographic have “raised more than $20 million from travelers to further the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of protecting the ocean, conserving wildlife, preserving local communities and culture.”
Ronny also cites 6 global tour brands of The Travel Corporation to secure validated net-zero targets by reducing carbon emissions.
NOTES
https://www.maisonspariente.com/en/
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382
https://thelodgeatwakullasprings.com/
https://www.veronicastoddart.com/
https://conventioncenter.broadmoor.com/sustainability.htm and associated lists; also, https://d1iwe50und7qx1.cloudfront.net/broadmoor.com-2121435814/cms/pressroom/2018_broadmoor_sustainability_brochure_1_tagged.pdf The resort seems to have reshuffled the six pages of information. They appeared two weeks ago.
https://www.xanterra.com/ + links to VBT and Country Walkers
https://www.norwegianamerican.com/hurtigruten-ms-richard-with/
https://www.expeditions.com/ and link to National Geographic
