The green Hospitality has come a long way from the normal thatched-roof bungalows and on-staff naturalists. All the hotels new or old has started taking environmental measures in account. In accordance with it few hotels have decorated few rooms using environmentally safe paints and also have used furniture made of salvaged forest-fire wood.
But the main question which most of hotelier or travelers face is ?What exactly does the word green mean?? Does a hotel that run on solar power is considered as green or one that compost food waste and passes scrapes to the pig farmers.
This can be judged by the term called ?Ecotourism?. Traditionally ecotourism gives equal attention to energy, ecology and conservation. In order to save energy and be eco-friendly some hotels are trying to use carbonate cells, which can create clean electricity and they require only water as a by-product for the process. Solar and wind energy are also the other options available but the are very rare because a large building would require a huge no. of solar cells to derive the more than that a fraction to their powers and in a urban area harnessing wind is impractical.
Green Products are also used in the hotels to be eco-friendly and to conserve energy as well. But can one rely on the ?green? labeled products. Green-Labeling came in 80s to help the people to purchase the environmental friendly products. But these days Green-Labeling has become so misleading just to earn profit and get business.
Some of the hotels have also started the green hotel consulting and help other hoteliers to enter in the zone of Green Hotels and also get the Green Hotel Certification from the Govt.
A green hotel should have a trained and adequate staff to take care of the services and actions and time to time up-gradation of the green products in the market.
Hoteliers should also think about the different ways of conserving energy some of them are:
One should not use the screen savers as energy savers because they continue to use the monitor at full power and do not conserve energy.
If someone is leaving the office for long hrs. one should shut down the computer, monitor, and personal printer or place them in a standby mode when he/she leave.
Temperature Control:
Thermostats should be adjusted to 68? by this one can save up to 5%on any heating costs. Don't place lamps, TV sets or computers near the thermostat.
