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Sustainable, responsible tourism: Luxury

travel's new trend

Accommodation at Portugal's Eco-Resort Pedras Salgadas has been built to blend into the woodland environment that
surrounds it. Photo: Eco-Resort Pedras Salgadas
Picture: Eco-Resort Pedras Salgadas
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As travellers’ interest in environmentally friendly holidays
continues to grow, so too does the number of innovative and
luxurious travel experiences on offer.

BY LOLA PEDRO

MARCH 15, 2013 11:26

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 Tierra Patagonia Hotel Spa
Enlarge
Tierra Patagonia Hotel Spa

It goes without saying that the travel industry contributes to a significant amount of waste and
pollution. While many travellers do care about the environment, few are willing to curtail their
holidays completely, because the proposed experience is too compelling or the alternatives are too
difficult and/or expensive. Yet, even the most cynical of luxury travellers are aware of the need to go
green. And for many, a personal lack of action only increases their desire for premium travel to be
environmentally considerate – because while travellers might not feel they can go green themselves,
they most certainly expect big airlines and hotel conglomerates to lead the way.

 
In recent years sustainability in the travel industry has progressed from a truly niche consideration
to an industry-wide priority (helped, of course, by airlines, airports and hotels finding that adopting
eco-friendly initiatives also saved them money). What is now clear to accommodation providers is
that holidaymakers expect the companies they book with to be as responsible, ethical and sustainable
as possible – allowing hotel guests to reuse their bed linen isn’t enough. Over the coming years
expect travel brands to integrate sustainability into their offerings in exciting and inventive ways.

Here’s a selection of three innovative yet eco-friendly trends in the luxury hotel sector:

Destination:Uninterrupted - Hotels that have minimal visual and structural impact on

their environment

 Some eco-conscious travellers no longer appreciate their luxurious hotels or dwellings being the
focus of their holiday. Rather, these travellers are increasingly looking to the location itself to provide
total aesthetic gratification, which they can experience in the rawest, purest and most unadulterated
form possible. Because of this, we can expect to see a greater number of accommodation types
designed to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Opened in January 2013, Sleeping Around is a temporary hotel that is continually placed in different
locations around Antwerp. Basic shipping containers have been transformed into a hotel space, with
rooms furnished using sustainably sourced materials. Guests find out where they’re overnighting
only after confirming their booking, at which point the directions are released via GPS.  

The Eco-Resort Pedras Salgadas is a collection of cabins built to blend into the woodland
environment they inhabit in a northern Portugal park and spa. The cabins were erected according to
the various sizes of the gaps between the trees and the placement of windows and doors reflect this
too. According to the designers Luis Reblo de Andrade and Diogo Aguiar, the cabins were purposely
built to have a ‘minimal effect on the local nature’, thus emphasising interaction between guests and
the park.
 

Flower Power – ‘Living Hotels’ take being green to a whole new extreme 

For the travellers that have long adopted a sustainable mindset, holidaying sustainably is imperative.
Many of these consumers derive their status from their own concern for the environment and are
seeking opportunities when travelling to flaunt their eco-credentials unabashedly. Nowadays, LEED
certifications, green housekeeping operations and sustainability programmes are simply not enough.
These guests yearn for bolder and even more iconic displays of what it means to be green. In order to
truly stand out from the ‘sustainable hotel’ crowd, luxury brands are pushing the boundaries once
more and embodying nature by becoming a beautiful, living, breathing extension of it.

US-based architecture firm Emergent unveiled designs for the 1,500-room National Hotel near
Beijing’s airport. The building will feature a 107,000-foot indoor rainforest, with windows and
skylights providing natural light and energy-efficient solar thermal pipes included to provide
heating.

The B3 Hotel Virrey in Bogota has an eight-storey living wall decorating the building’s exterior.
Composed of more than 25,000 plants (over 40 per cent of which are indigenous Colombian
species), the vertical garden is self-pollinating and also helps to insulate the hotel and reduce
pollution.

Eco-experiences - Outsourcing eco-initiatives to guests and embedding sustainability

into holiday experiences 

It’s safe to say that we are in an age where ‘convenient’ sustainability appeals to the majority. Yet as
premium hotels up the ante with their eco-related offerings, truly eco-conscious travellers also expect
these organisations to enable them to take a step further in their own sustainability-related
commitments. Savvy brands in the hotel sector understand that for these consumers, responsible
consumption is a two-way affair. And the coming years will see more hotels facilitating increasingly
novel, engaging and memorable guest participatory eco-experiences.
 

In 2012, Cottage Lodge bed and breakfast in Hampshire unveiled the Standing Hat room, where
guests who want to watch television are required to do so via pedal-power. Other eco facilities
include bamboo flooring and a wood-burning stove. The holiday accommodation was built with
sustainability in mind, and the solar-powered Standing Hat room was constructed from locally
sourced Douglas Fir trees.

Chile’s Tierra Patagonia Hotel & Spa launched an initiative in 2012 to give each of its guests a
trackable virtual tree seed for planting in fire-ravaged areas of the Chilean Patagonia, through a
partnership with non-profit Reforestemos Patagonia. Every guest is given a virtual tree code when
they reserve accommodation at the hotel and can then choose where they would like their tree to be
planted, receiving an email certificate verifying planting along with the exact, trackable coordinates
through a geo-referenced Google Maps link.   

Demand for sustainable solutions in the luxury-travel sector will continue to rise, which of course
provides a win-win situation for all. Even the most eco-conscious consumers will still travel a great
deal but they are looking for ways to offset their guilt and will pay a premium for the opportunity –
for luxury-travel brands that’s yet another incentive to champion environmental responsibility.

Lola Pedro is a senior industry analyst at London-based trend firm trendwatching.com. One of the
world's leading trend firms, it monitors and reports on emerging consumer trends, insights and
innovations. You can follow its latest reports on Twitter @trendwatching.