Trip Ideas

How Hotel Chains Are Going Green

T+L looks at how several hotel companies are going a step beyond those ubiquitous towel- and linen-reuse programs, from their guest rooms to their boutiques.

By

Jennifer Flowers

Published on March 27, 2009

Guest Room

The 42 Kimpton hotels (kimptonhotels.com) now have in-room recycling bins for paper, bottles, and cans, which helped to increase the group’s collective recycling rate from 22 to 75 percent over the past three years.

Kitchen

Late last year, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts (fairmont.com) cooked up a company policy encouraging all of its 100 kitchens worldwide to use organic food sourced within 100 miles.

Bathroom

Starwood’s five-month-old Aloft group (starwoodhotels.com) has installed refillable shampoo and body-wash dispensers at its 16 properties, and plans to do the same for 500 upcoming openings. Similar-size hotels go through 25,000 to 30,000 plastic shampoo bottles a year.

Housekeeping

More than 2,500 hotel rooms and apartments at RockResorts (rockresorts.com) have swapped out chemical cleaners for a line that uses such natural ingredients as citrus oil.

Outdoors

Southeast Asia–based Six Senses (sixsenses.com) is safeguarding the seascapes at 11 of its 14 hotels with a chlorine-free pool sanitation system, protecting coral and marine life.

Shop

Swedish-owned Scandic Hotels (scandichotels.com) made a splash last month when it stopped selling bottled water at all 147 European properties. The savings?Some 160 tons of CO2 output annually.

The boutiques at Banyan Tree resorts (banyantree.com) partner with more than 50 local communities to sell crafts by area artisans, including Khmer silk pouches, Thai worry dolls, and Javanese batik fabrics.

Which hotel group is making the greatest strides?Read about Marriott, a winner in this year’s Global Vision Awards.