ABTA launches Travelife directory of 'green' hotels

The launch of Abta's (Association of British Travel Agents) eco hotel search directory is a clear indication from the industry that there is an appetite for greener holidays. Environmentalist Jonathan Porritt says in his foreword to the directory: “Holidaymakers are increasingly looking for some reliable assurance rather than relying on instinct to confirm that we are truly choosing responsible places to stay”.

The Travelife Directory, jointly launched by Abta and the Federation of Tour Operators, features 77 “sustainable hotels” that aim “to help reduce the impact of travel on a destination and to benefit local economies”. Each hotel is awarded bronze, silver and gold depending on how they are rated on a range of criteria assessed by trained auditors, including how they manage energy, water and waste management, as well as their commitment to nature conservation, ethical employment practices, sourcing local food and community relations.

Certifying hotels on their green and ethical credentials is not new. There are over 150 accommodation eco labels worldwide, a bewildering mixture of regional, national and international schemes. However, Travelife is different because it is awarded to hotels in mainstream destinations, such as Majorca, Tenerife, Jamaica and The Gambia, which are used by some of the biggest names in travel, including Thomson, Thomas Cook, First Choice, Kuoni, and lastminute.com.

So how green are these properties? Flicking through the brochure I expected to find that the best performing hotels would be very low impact, that they would be designed to blend into the landscape, they would be built out of sustainable materials, maybe they’d even be off-grid. Not so. Disappointingly, the majority of hotels featured are huge concrete buildings, some with over 100 rooms, and most have at least one large energy-intensive swimming pool. They may have demonstrated to the auditors that they are actively committed to greening up their act, but “sustainable hotels” they are not.

“We’re not saying that these hotels have no impact,” says Chris Thompson, the brains behind Travelife, “we’re saying that these hotels are actively managing their impact and reducing it to as much of a minimum as they can. That’s the goal”.

It’s encouraging to see that the hotels featured in the Travelife Directory are at least making a step in the right direction. Grootbos Private Nature Reserve in South Africa has an impressive record in supporting plant conservation, while others, such as the Bougainvillea Beach Resort Hotel in Barbados and Turtle Bay Beach Resort in Kenya have incorporated renewable energies and made concerted effort to purchase food locally.

All 77 Travelife hotels have to some degree demonstrated they are actively minimising their environmental impact, but compared with the size of mainstream travel industry this is piecemeal: every year some 16 million package holidaymakers travel abroad to stay at over 50,000 hotels. If just ten percent of these hotels showed the same kind of ethical commitment as the few hotels currently in the Travelife Directory that would provide a much more meaningful range of options to satisfy the perceived appetite for greener holidays. Now that would be progress.

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This article, by Richard Hammond, was first published as a comment on timesonline.co.uk.