(Updated 8/25/2010)
You care about the environmental practices of the hotels you stay in, right?
Our research shows a definite consumer trend of travelers wanting and using information about eco-friendliness in the hospitality industry. A guy I know insists he’ll stay in only “eco-groovy” hotels. You probably would call them “green.” When I asked him how he knows it’s eco-groovy he pointed to the little cards hanging on the bathroom rack urging travelers to use their towels more than once.
Aside from my experience that most hotel housekeepers install new towels even when I hang the used ones back up, there’s a lot more to running an environmentally responsible hotel than laundry practices.
Scoping Out the Landscape
I invested a decent amount of time in 2008 with my colleague Michael Petrone – who heads up the large team of folks who inspect, evaluate and assign AAA’s Diamond Ratings to North American hotels and restaurants –
exploring how AAA can authenticate a hotel’s eco-groovy – sorry – green claims and publish that information for our online and TourBook® guide readers.
We were invited by some of AAA’s hotel partners (who give great discounts to AAA members, by the way) to participate in a green program development initiative headed up by the
American Hotel and Lodging Association, a trade group. Their leaders initially hoped a single, green-evaluation program could be adopted as a standard for all properties. Then, we thought, AAA could publish a green symbol in the listings of hotels that achieved green status in this program.
During this exploration AAA decided our ultimate role would be solely to publish information. We are not experts in measuring furnace efficiency, wastewater production or cleaning chemical composition. We will leave green certification to programs developed and administered by others.
What we discovered was extreme fragmentation in a jungle of green programs both privately administered and run by federal or state governments. Requirements differ greatly from one program to the next. We found really good intentions and what appear to be several solid programs but they are all just different enough to make reconciling and explaining them to consumers a real challenge. Moreover, the hotel industry ultimately decided against adopting a single solution – so the fragmentation, diversity and resulting confusion are bound to remain for the foreseeable future.
Beware of ‘Greenwashing’
When somebody plays with your head to make you think a certain way you call it “brainwashing.” When a person or company tries to convince you something is green – usually something they have a financial interest in – it’s called “
greenwashing.” One of our challenges has been separate programs of dubious ecological value from programs that, assuming the certification is thorough, would be good for the environment.
What Do You Think of Our Plan?
- AAA has compiled a list of private and government hotel green programs of varying criteria and certification levels that appear credible based on AH&LA’s education and research branch and our own examinations.
- AAA Approved hotels are allowed to mention in TourBook and online advertising certifications they have achieved from programs on our list, to which we will add if new credible programs surface.
- We publish in TourBook and online hotel listings a generic, green icon or symbol denoting hotels that have proven they are certified in one of the green programs on the AAA list.
- The complete list, with links and brief overviews, is available at
AAA.com/eco for consumers to obtain more information about the programs.
We’d be interested to hear what you think of our plan or any other comments you may have about hotels going green.
