Does the Tourism Industry Understand the Color Green?

During this whole VFg3 project, G.G.'s been wondering if the tourism industry understands the meaning of green. After doing a quick survey of destination marketing offices (DMOs, most of them being Convention and Visitors Bureaus - CVBs), G.G. can attest some offices are doing the basics - recycling and some energy conservation. But what about policies of purchasing green products from green vendors? Or, purchasing carbon offset emissions when traveling?

Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) understands the color of green. The association, which serves as the world's premier resource for DMOs, purchased staff travel carbon offsets for the 93rd annual convention in 2007. That's pretty cool.

With all the talk of going green, I recently came across the Hotel HotSheet USA Today blog and a post about a ecotainers being introduced in the Hilton Garden Inn hotel line. Ecotainers are "all-natural hot beverage cups coated with corn-based plastic" and "requires less energy and generates less greenhouse gas during manufacturing." Sounds pretty cool and tasty!

What's astonishing is that the 300-plus Hilton Garden Inns annually consume 6 million Styrofoam-based cups!

Even more interesting in the blog post is a link to an article on Hotel-Online.com called, "The Colour of Hotels The Politics of Going Green" by Barry Napier, which links to Napier's article called, "The Real Deal Behind Green Hotels and Carbon Footprints."

Napier not only questions global warming but points out scientific studies disclaiming it. In turn, hotels (especially the small ones) and the rest of the world (because we as consumers are helping the green hotels profit), are being duped and wasting money by going green. He makes the distinction between "going green" (reducing waste, saving money) and "saving the planet" (in essence, he says the planet is not in peril).

Give his articles a read, they're interesting food for thought.