Book Review: The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of our Holidays
Leo Hickman Eden Project Books, UK, 2007, £12.99

BY 2010, IT is likely that there will be over one billion international tourist trips made each year. It’s a frightening statistic, not least because of the disconnect that often exists between our willingness to enjoy our two weeks in the sun with a lack of awareness of how our holidays actually impact on the places we so love to visit. The Final Call is a long overdue investigation into why there is often much more to our holidays than meets the eye...

The World Travel and Tourism Council has announced the winners for the 2008 Tourism for Tomorrow Awards. These 4 organisations "showcase the world's leading examples in sustainable tourism development among a pool of 150 exceptional applications from over 40 countries."

The judging process included a team of 11 international judges who selected 3 finalists in each award category, followed, crucially, by an on-site inspection of all finalists. The winners were then selected from among the finalists by a panel of four judges including Costas Christ, Chairman of Judges, Tourism for Tomorrow Awards, Graham Boynton, Group Travel Editor, The Telegraph Media Group, and Francis Farrell, Vice President & Publisher, National Geographic Adventure.

The winners were:

DESTINATION AWARD: Blackstone Valley, USA (www.blackstonevalleytourismcouncil.com)

From long stretches of fine sand to networks of cycle paths, some of the best beaches are just a train ride away...

Plage de la Courtade, Porquerolles, France
Porquerolles is the largest (and the nearest to the mainland) of the three islands in the Hyères gulf, just east of Toulon on the French Riviera. Plage de la Courtade is one of several long sandy beaches close to the island's only village on the north coast where you can stay at L'Arche de Noé, a fish restaurant with rooms and a large terrace.


Beach at Mawgan Porth, Cornwall
Photo: Richard Hammond

· 0033 4 94 58 33 71, arche-de-noe.com. From €210 half-board per room for two. Train London-Hyères (via Paris) from £138 return (0844 848 4070, raileurope.co.uk) then ferry to Porquerolles £10.70 return (+ 4 94 58 21 81, tlv-tvm.com).

Snaefellsnes Community has recently become the first Green Globe Certified Community in Iceland & Europe and only the 4th in the world.

Snaefellsnes Community has been committed to the Green Globe Programme since 2003 and have successfully Benchmarked for the past 5 consecutive years.

It has been named Iceland in Miniature, as many national sights can be found in the area, including the Snæfellsjökull volcano, regarded as one of the symbols of Iceland. With its height of 1446m, it is the highest mountain on the peninsula and has a glacier called the (jökull) at its peak. The volcano can be seen on clear days from Reykjavík, a distance of about 120 km away. The mountain is also known as the setting of the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth by the French author Jules Verne.

www.greenglobe.org

Fancy visiting South Africa but feeling guilty about the air miles? How about volunteering at Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Limpopo, the country's northernmost province. Limpopo is home to Kruger, Mapungubwe and Marakele National Parks plus at least 50 provincial nature reserves. Riverside makes a great base for exploring the province and it makes excellent use of its volunteers. You would be helping out with the rehabilitation of primates (vervet monkeys, baboons, bush babies), as well as birds, antelope and reptiles. To date 344 vervet monkeys have been successfully returned to the wild.

For further information contact:
Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation and Environmental Education Centre
E-mail: river-edu@mweb.co.za
Website: www.primate-sa.org/VolenteerProj/AboutProgram/AboutProgram.htm

It's hardly rocket science. Grow your own salad and you save £1,000 a year; cut down on waste and you won't have to fork out so much on contractors and industrial bins; buy local produce and you'll find favour with the village. That's according to Vanessa Scott, co-owner of Strattons Hotel and Restaurant in Swaffham, Norfolk, which yesterday was awarded the Sustainability Award in the annual Enjoy England Awards for Excellence.

Yet the surprising thing about Strattons is that it's not your usual socks-and-sandals green bolthole. It's a 10-room country hotel in a Grade II-listed Queen Anne villa with canopied four-poster beds, open fires, stripped wooden floorboards and free-standing baths. The hotel made it into the first Mr&Mrs Smith UK boutique hotel guide and you're just as likely to see it featured on the glossy pages of Country Living as on the chlorine-free pages of the Ecologist...

(Above: Strattons Hotel and Restaurant in Swaffham, Norfolk. photo © Richard Hammond.)

The Novotel hotel group entered into an agreement with Green Globe, the leading Benchmarking and Certification programme for the tourism and hospitality industry, to achieve worldwide certification of the network’s 400 hotels across 61 countries.

The Green Globe programme is managed by Brisbane based EC3 Global, the commercialisation and adaptation division of the Sustainable Tourism Co-Operative Research Centre, whose research programme is overseen by 17 of Australia’s leading universities.

Green Globe is the only international Benchmarking and Certification programme based on Agenda 21 principles. It provides a framework for environmental and social performance improvement through independent third party verification.

In July 2007 Novotel commenced the rollout of Green Globe with a pilot programme that involved 28 hotels in 12 countries across five continents.

The countries involved were Australia, New Zealand,: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Brazil, the Ivory Coast, India, China, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia