Green, the way forward for tourism

Excel: Chairman Jetwing Hotels, Hiran Cooray who was a panellist at World Travel Market's World Responsible Tourism Day said the world should look at a ratings system highlighting green and sustainability performance.

Cooray who sat with world's leading hoteliers at the event said that on their part they have adopted several green and sustainable tools when building Vil Uyana hotel.

"We want to take this a step away and will soon introduce wind power to two of our hotels," he said.

Cooray the former President of the Tourist Hotel's Association of Sri Lanka said when they were planning to build Vil Uyana, the eco friendly villa type luxury hotel in Dambulla best hydrologists were consulted.

"We also wanted not to damage the environment and most importantly wanted to give more to the community," he said.

With BBC's Stephen Sackur as the mediator, he said to a large audience that 'green' and sustainability would be the future of the hotels. He said that 'travel guilt' feeling the international travellers would have also reduces when they stay in hotels that adopt sustainable methods.

It is also an advantage for a hotel to be green as on the long run as its overheads would come down. "Hotels are now getting this message across and this is something positive," he said.

One of the world's most influential hoteliers and President of Marriott International, Ed Fuller, who was also in the panel said they work together, have benchmark tools, have developed sustainability guidelines for construction.

"In some areas, especially environmental , the economic situation might help us by focusing more on energy and our commitment of 25 per cent reduction in water use. We may even move faster during this time and take a more aggressive posture.

"We have an air-conditioning policy on controlling the temperature and trying to do that with electrical consumption as well. When we build leisure resorts, we clearly try to avoid using any air conditioning in the public lobby - we aim to use the local environment.

"I wouldn't say that having swimming pools is irresponsible but we are looking at those situations. Obviously, where there is a water shortage problem, we often use salt water pools .It is a better way to approach the issue and something we have learned in recent years - providing the customer with what they want and being sensitive to the shortage.

"You try to design an environment that you are in. I was in Thailand a week ago and we are using salt-water pools in the new products that we have there.

Founder of Sanctuary Resorts, Andrew Jones said sustainable tourism would also help to reduce the carbon foot print from tourism.

"Local governments too should encourage such hotels," he said.