Marriott introduces first LEED green hotel prototype

South Carolina is now home to the first Marriott LEED green hotel prototype. The Courtyard Charleston/Summerville will be the hotel’s flagship green property, in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

The new Courtyard hotel will open in early 2010 and will introduce the first phase of The Parks of Berkley, a community consisting of 5,000 acres and one of the largest planned developments in the Southeastern United States.

Marriott has set its sights on 300 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) hotels by 2015, and all the hotels to come will follow the South Carolina prototype. Last fall, the hotel group announced plans to develop a green hotel prototype for its Courtyard brand that will save roughly $100,000, six months in design time, and up to 25 percent energy and water savings for its owners.

Currently, Marriott has nearly 50 hotels across all brands that are LEED-certified or registered by the USGBC, including:

  • The Inn & Conference Center by Marriott at the University of Maryland, the first LEED-certified hotel in North America
  • The Ritz-Carlton, Charlotte in North Carolina, LEED Gold-certified
  • Courtyard Chevy Chase in Maryland, LEED Gold-certified
  • Courtyard Portland City Center in Oregon, LEED Gold-certified
  • Fairfield Inn & Suites Baltimore Downtown/Inner Harbor, LEED Gold-certified
  • Atlanta Marriott Gateway, applying for LEED certification upon opening
  • SpringHill Suites Atlanta Airport Gateway, LEED-registered, applying for certification
  • JW San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa, LEED-registered, applying for certification
  • JW Marriott Hotel Los Angeles LA Live, LEED-registered, applying for certification
  • The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles at LA Live, LEED-registered, applying for certification
  • The Ritz-Carlton Highlands, Lake Tahoe, in Nevada applying for certification
  • TownePlace Suites Baltimore BWI Airport, applying for LEED-Existing Building certification

Win a deluxe Japanese HighTECH toilet from Miyako Hybrid Hotel

L.A.’s outpost of the stylish Miyako Hybrid Hotel has a gift for you this tax season. Become a Facebook Fan by 8:00 p.m. (PST) on April 15, and you’re in the running (ha ha, get it?) to win the most superfluous of home appliances: a Japanese HomeTECH bidet and TOTO toilet system (the HI-3001 WT “Feel Fresh” Bidet n’ Wash Hygiene System, to be exact). For the uninitiated, this is the ultimate in ass luxury. Think push button control panel with memory, warm water wash, twin spray nozzles, and cozy heated seat; retail value just under $600.

The hotel features one of these thrones in each of their 208 rooms and 12 suites, but the extravagance is tempered by the LEED-certified chain’s commitment to high-tech sustainability. As the word “hybrid” suggests, the property boasts a solar-powered electrical system and environmentally-friendly and recycled construction materials, along with contemporized Japanese art and artifacts appointed throughout the hotel. So get your butt in gear, and sign up now.

How green is your hotel?

Not too long ago, any hotel that had one of those “please reuse your towels” signs in the bathroom was considered “green“. But with new hotels upping the ante by adding more features that reduce waste and environmental impact, it takes a lot more than that to truly be green. Here are some of the greenest hotel features to look for in an eco-friendly hotel.

Sheet and Towel Reuse Programs
Literally, this is the least a hotel can do. Asking guests to reuse towels and only changing the linens every few days or between guests no doubt saves water (and money for the hotel) but those positive contributions can easily be negated through other actions. If this all the hotel does, it might just be more frugal than green.

Bulk Toiletry Dispensers
Every time you check into a hotel, you’re provided with small bottles of face wash, body wash, lotion, shampoo and conditioner. Even if you’ve only used a minuscule drop, those bottles are tossed out and restocked at the end of your stay. This happens every day, for every room sold, at hotels all around the world. That’s a lot of tiny bottles clogging up landfills. The greener option being implemented in many hotels is to install bulk dispensers (similar to soap dispensers in public restrooms) that dole out small amounts of shampoo, soap and lotion without the extra packaging.

Local and Organic Cooking
Hotel restaurant chefs that use local, fair-trade, sustainable and organic ingredients get a gold-star for for being green. Using local products means that the food travels less to get to the consumer, which in turn means less energy is used and less emissions are added to the air from the planes, trains and trucks that transport food. Organic ingredients are created without the chemicals and pesticides that can harm the surrounding eco-systems, fair-trade products support local farmers, and sustainable foodstuffs are made in a way that doesn’t deplete the natural resources of the area. Hotels that employ these practices in their restaurants are doing something that is not only healthy for their guests, but is healthy for the community and environment as well. The hotel gets even more bonus points if some or all of the produce comes from the hotel’s own garden.

Green Lighting Practices
Replacing fluorescent light bulbs with ENERGY STAR certified compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) means that a hotel will use 75% less energy per year. While hotel guests can do their part by turning off all unnecessary lights when not in the room, some hotels, like the LEED-certified Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco, make this easier by requiring the lights to be activated by key card. The key card, usually attached to the hotel key, must be inserted into a slot in order to turn the lights on. Since you’ll obviously need to take the key and lighting key card with you when you leave the room, there’s no way you can leave the lights on while you’re out.

Green Building Materials
The buildings at Sadie Cove Wilderness Lodge in Alaska are constructed from scavenged driftwood, the mattresses and bedding at the Asheville Green Cottage in South Carolina are made from all organic materials, and the walls at Los Manos B&B in Colorado are built of local adobe and the ceilings are insulated with cellulose from old newspapers. All of these properties are using green building practices that help conserve precious resources. Using recycled, organic, scavenged and eco-friendly (like low-emission paints) materials in the building process makes a hotel green from the very beginning.

Reducing Water Usage
The El Monte Sagrado in Taos, New Mexico filters its wastewater into pure drinking water, but there are plenty of other ways hotels can save water that are a littler easier to do. Many green hotels install low-flow regulators in showers and toilet tanks, and some even put in automatic-timer showers that shut off after a certain number of minutes. (You can restart them with the push of a button, but the ticking clock serves as a powerful reminder to make it quick). Hotels in temperate areas have chosen to do their landscaping with tropical plants, which require less water to maintain.

Alternative Power
Many hotels are looking to alternative sources of power; the Alpine House in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gets all of its power from wind turbines. Look for hotels that boast the use of solar and wind power for even part of their energy usage. Hotels that use shade trees and crosswinds to cool rooms, rather than air conditioning, also increase their eco-friendly factor.

Recycling Programs
All the paper used in the Hotel Triton in San Francisco, from napkins in the restaurant to stationary in the guest rooms, is made from recycled materials. Of course, after it’s used, it still gets tossed out. I’ve never seen a recycling bin in any hotel I’ve stayed in, and I highly doubt that housekeeping takes the time to separate recyclables from trash. As a result, plenty of paper, aluminum and plastic that could be recycled ends up getting tossed. Any hotel that offers recycling bins in the room is one step up on the green ladder.

Green Cleaning Products
Using non-toxic, all-natural cleaning products helps reduce the amount of dangerous chemicals that get into the water system and cause pollution. Look for hotels like Denver’s Queen Anne Bed and Breakfast which uses only baking soda to its clean tubs, sinks and toilets.

Other Green Practices
When combined with some of these larger-scale practices, the smallest acts can help make a green hotel even more eco-friendly. All Fairmont hotels offer free parking for hybrid cars, the Vancouver Hilton offers an alternative fueling station, and many hotels will provide free bikes for guests to get around on. Stocking guest rooms with glass drinking cups instead of plastic and relying on natural lighting as much as possible in public areas are two additional practices that make a big difference.

I doubt there’s any hotel that employs every single one of these practices. But it’s a safe bet to say that the more of these strategies a hotel uses, the greener it is. No hotel will have zero impact on the environment, but choosing a hotel that take does its best to use environmentally-friendly policies will help make your travels greener.

The Brando eco-friendly beach resort to open in 2011

Did you know that Marlon Brando owned (and now his estate owns) an entire French Polynesian atoll 35 miles from Tahiti? Did you also know that Brando dreamed of creating an eco-friendly resort on the atoll? Well both are true, and by 2011 Brando’s dream will be a reality, thanks to Richard Bailey, CEO of Tahiti Beachcomber.

Bailey was a longtime friend of Brando’s and had been working with him on the project before Brando’s death in 2004. Bailey owns four InterContinental resorts in Tahiti and will use some of the same sustainable technology used at those resorts to make sure The Brando has as little impact on the surrounding environment as possible. One technology will use a pipe to bring cold water up from the depths of the sea and use it to provide cool air to the rooms – a practice that will have zero environmental impact.

The resort, which will be the only one on the 13-island chain of Tetiaroa that Brando bought in 1965, will feature 47 luxury villas, each with its own plunge pool, plus a spa, fitness center, and a resort pool. Activities at the resort will include snorkeling, scuba diving, and exploring the nearby islands and Tahitian culture. No word on how much a stay at the luxury eco-resort will cost, but no one ever said saving the environment didn’t come with a price.

[via ShermansTravel]

Jalousie Plantation resort brings solar golf carts to St Lucia

Okay, it’s not exactly a cure for cancer, but any initiative that does cut down on fossil fuel reliance still resonates with me. So, I was pretty excited to see that the Jalousie Plantation has adopted a hybrid solar-powered golf cart to move guests around on its 192-acre property … with no carbon emissions! This is among the first of these environmentally-friendly golf carts in the Caribbean, and the goal is for this quirky little vehicle to replace the oil-dependent carts and minibuses that currently carry passengers around Jalousie.

This measure is reflective of Jalousie parent company Kor Hotel Group’s “Second Nature” program, which consists of several eco-friendly measures across its holdings. Kor’s properties are encouraged to source local produce, arts and other supplies to cut down on food-miles (or other “product-miles”) in an effort to reduce carbon emissions while contributing to economic growth in the community.

“We want to play our part at The Jalousie Plantation in supporting the environmentally-conscious initiatives of Kor and the new hybrid solar-powered golf cart is seen as a first step in helping us to do this,” Jalousie’s General Manager, Rodrigo Caldeira said.

The golf cart has a photovoltaic cell on its roof, which takes St Lucia sunshine and turns it into the electricity that makes the cart move. In the event of rain, the cart can be plugged into an electrical outlet to have its battery charged.

“Eventually all of the vehicles we use at Jalousie will be gasoline-free and this will help us to lessen our emissions of greenhouse gases which are having a tremendous impact on eco-systems around the world and contributing to climatic change and global warming,” Caldeira said. “The new cart also significantly reduces noise pollution and makes a great contribution in our efforts to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and in ensuring our operations are environmentally sustainable.”