Travelocity Goes Green
ByJanelle Nanos
February 04, 2009
2 min readThe LEED-certified Terra Hotel in Jackson Hole is one of the featured properties on Travelocity’s “Travel Green” site.
We were psyched to hear the news last week that Travelocity is now offering its users a search engine that will help steer them into greener pastures – literally. Their new “Travel Green” site has a selection of over 200 sustainably-minded hotels and suppliers. Travel Mole reports:
Many are 100-percent carbon neutral, serve locally-grown, organic foods in their restaurants, and some have partnerships with local conservation groups and encourage guests to make individual donations, which will be matched by the hotel.
Travelocity has developed a four-tier system based around the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria Partnership rating system, which helps determine if a business is truly making an effort at being ecologically and culturally responsible. The properties and destinations featured in the green directory are likely to be training their staff and management about conservation, supporting the local community, working for cultural as well as environmental preservation and actively reducing their carbon footprints. Each business may not be doing all of these things, but if they are taking action in most of these areas, they rated highly enough to earn a spot in Travelocity’s directory.
Travelocity has partnered with Energy Star, the Rainforest Alliance, the United Nations Foundation and the United Nations World Tourism Organization to identify and rate the suppliers, and are using the UN sanctioned guidelines for the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria — which were established with the help of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, the creation of which we reported on earlier this year — as their model.
We’re glad to see a mainstream travel search engine devote the time and energy to developing the site.
Photo: The Terra Hotel in Jackson Hole, via Travelocity.
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