Pick of the Lot
While it’s a step in the right direction, it’s not enough for hotels to use glass bottles, metal straws and eschew plastic if they want to call themselves sustainable. If you’re looking for hotels that walk the talk, the new Considerate Collection by Small Luxury Hotels (SLH) lists properties around the world that live up to their green claims. SLH worked with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and Singapore-based sustainable tourism management platform Greenview to come up with the criteria across three pillars— “community minded, cultural custodians and environmentally conscious”—on which the hotels are assessed. Only 26 hotels across 16 countries made the cut when it was launched in October, including Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary in Bhutan and Keemala in Phuket.
Hotel group Beyond Green similarly highlights hotels, resorts and lodges that are sustainable leaders, and recently released experiences that put nature first. That includes activities at the organic estate of Borgo Pignano in Tuscany, Italy, a renowned luxury hotel sitting on 300 hectares of land. Guests can learn skills through courses that bring them closer to nature when they return home—a primer on beekeeping, highlighting local traditional methods for extracting honey and beeswax, for example; or an introduction to gathering wild herbs and flowers with the in-house herbalist to learn about their healing properties and incorporating them into cooking. slh.com/considerate; staybeyondgreen.com