The Green Hotels Craze (Thankfully) Hits India

March 14, 2008 at 9:00 AM | 0 Comments

India gets a bad press for its increasing use of energy and fossil fuels to feed a booming economy. But it's not all bad - there's a trend towards building 'green' hotels which use around 35 per cent less energy as standard hotels.

The latest is the Park Hotel in Hyderabad, capital of the Indian state Andhra Pradesh. It's due to open in mid-2009 and will have 280 eco-friendly rooms. Its baby green hotel-sister also being built in Pune by the same chain.

They make a big deal of the 90 per cent non-smoking rule - if you've ever smelt the fumes rising from an Indian cigarette, you'll know that banning smoking in the country would cut India's pollution effect by around half.

Green and eco-friendly hotels seem to be the flavour of the month in our increasingly energy-conscious world. The much-hyped Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco is one of the most well known, but they're springing up everywhere.

The flag they all want to wave is the LEED (US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) certificate, and there are apparently around 170 hotels in India awaiting this certification.

By the way, there's a technical difference between 'green' and 'eco-friendly' hotels: green hotels are energy-savers but tend to cost more in original building costs (the Park Hotel will cost around 15 per cent more), whereas eco-friendly hotels are built using recycled materials. We've stayed in enough hotels with cardboard walls and tin-can bathtubs, thanks.

Careful, careful, though, with these green hotels. The self-proclaimed Green Hotel in Mysore, South India, apparently has to resort to hurricane lanterns at dinnertime on a regular basis due to power failures....part of the holiday experience.

[Photo: Hamza Hydri]

Tags: Green Hotels / Hotel News / Eco-Hotels / India Hotels

by femmefatale

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