and This Site
Environmentally friendly hotels, or green hotels, are lodging properties which take one or more environmental actions. We have selected not only some green issues that you can easily see and experience during your visit, but also some issues that are less visible, like being active in and responsible to the community (donating to charity, environmental education efforts. or hiring locals).
We have collected as many environmentally friendly hotels, B&Bs, inns, lodges, and resorts as we could find that proclaim one way or another that they are "green". One challenge has been that lodging properties too often don't promote their environmental initiatives, making it hard to find them.
With the advent of the internet it is easier for green and environmentally friendly hotels to promote their environmental actions, but for some reason they don't often enough use this great tool. Many businesses, even those that are taking green steps, don't think that anyone cares, at least not enough to use "green", or environmental issues, as part of their decision making process. We hope that as this site grows in content and use, green hotels will become easier to find and select. We also hope this site will encourage more hotels to become eco-lodges in their own way.
This website is for you and your fellow green travelers. Make it more useful for yourself and others by spreading the word, updating our information about the green hotels you encounter, writing reviews, and adding to the database by suggesting a green hotel for inclusion. With your help, this directory is still growing. The more green hotels we can include here, the better it is for everyone.
We have provided a couple of ways for you to search the directory. The "Basic Search" lets you specify either a property name or location. The "Advanced Search" allows inclusion of specific green issues, along with a location or property name, in seeking a green hotel for your travels. The result of your search will be a list of the green hotels and their locations that satisfy your interests.
Once you have a search list, click on the desired hotel name to get its summary page. Tha page consists of any comments we gleaned about the hotel, a checklist of the known green actions taken there, and possibly a review of the property. The property name on the summary page is a hot link to the property's website where you can get more information about the hotel.
Additionally, we have a definitions page to help you understand how we are using each term, and an explanation of our rating system. Each term has an article attached, expanding our logic in why that environmental issue is important.
Do you want to submit an environmentally friendly hotel for inclusion in this database? We'd love to have you do so! Here's where you suggest or submit an environmentally friendly hotel for our review. It doesn't take us very long to add the suggested hotel, and we'll try to let you know when we have finished our work.
Everytime you stay at an environmentally friendly hotel, please write a review of it for inclusion with the green hotel's listing. Unless you request otherwise, your name and the date of your stay will be included in the review. Reviewing environmentally friendly hotels is easy. Write about not only the various aspects of your stay, but also any other environmental actions you see they take that aren't covered in the checklist. Also please correct any checklist items, like if they offer a towel/sheet reuse program but don't honor your request, we want to know. Or if they are a non-smoking property or offer organic and eco-friendly foods but don't promote that, we want to know that too. We want this database to be as up-to-date and accurate as possible. We can only do that with your help.
Thanks for making this a great website. Happy green travels!