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National Geographic Traveler's "Stay List"
It was a long time coming, but National Geographic Traveler (NGT) published its list of 150 hotels you'll love to stay in. The author picked the brains of a wide range of people to find the great places to stay that are green, embrace authenticity and give back to their communities. The list has been published in the April 2008 issue.
If you are looking for a hotel that has a sense of place and is green, or at least has eco-awareness, find the April 2008 issue of National Geographic Traveller and browse their list of 150 hotels in which you'll love to stay.
NGT staff contacted me last spring to be on their panel to submit properties and judge the collection of hotels for this article. It turns out they were going to do the culling and judging themselves so I was only needed for submitting the greenest hotels that give a sense of place, in the Americas.
Since I have a growing list of green hotels I thought I'd be able to come up with a great collection of such properties for them to consider. It turns out they also wanted properties that are larger than 10 guestrooms and aren't a ranch or spa. I ultimately was only able to submit 14 properties from EnvironmentallyFriendlyHotels.com, based on my understanding of what they wanted.
After seeing the list I'm surprised at how many more I could have submitted. Granted, I don't have all of the green information about the hotels on my list, but some they accepted for their article didn't seem green at all, while some were very green. I was surprised to see guest ranches included in the list too. It seems they really wanted properties with a sense of place, and if they had some environmental stewardship that was good.
I was pleased to see how many hotels from my list of green hotels were included in their list of places to stay. It's good for green hotels to get publicity like provided in an article by National Geographic.
There are lots of interesting and beautiful properties included in the article. I'm glad to see a list of properties that have maintained a sense of place, but I'm kind of sad to see what little focus was placed on the environmental aspects. In my experience there are lots of green hotels that exhibit a strong environmental stewardship and maintain a sense of place they could have written about.
With that kind of publicity, being green can be very ECOnomically Sound.
Posted by Kit
