Travelspeak Green Star Rating

Green Star Rating for hotels and resorts

A large, new part of our sustainable tourism vision is to encourage hotels to become more environmentally friendly whist promoting those which are already embracing this relatively new, crucial way of operating.

In order to do this we have launched a new project to review and rate hotels based on their “green” credentials. After months of research, we have developed a set of criteria that we feel hotels should adhere to and created a system called “Green Star Rating” to rate all types of accommodation on how well they are working towards becoming more environmentally friendly, sustainable travel providers.

Hotels that meet our set criteria are given a star rating and which is clearly published on our website for you all to see as well as giving hotels the chance to use the Green Star Rating logo on their own websites to promote their green credentials and the work their doing.

In order to remain independent and trustworthy and to encourage as many hotels and resorts to get involved we do not take payment from hotels to be part of our green hotel scheme. However, to offset the costs involved in running our scheme we offer a complete booking system for a large number of hotels across Thailand (powered by Thai owned tourism portal Web Sawadee). You can reserve all hotels offered by Sawadee through our website no matter what their green rating, however we only actively promote those hotels with the higher green ratings. We want you to continue choosing which hotel is best for you, whilst clearly displaying a hotels green rating in order for this to become an important part of your decision process when choosing a place to stay.

We hope to see an increased number of bookings on our website for hotels and resorts with a higher “Green Star Rating” so that we can take this data to hotel owners and show them conclusively that there is a real business and well as moral need to reduce the negative impact of operating their hotel’s on local people and the environment.

What are the criteria you measure against?

We measure a large range of criteria from the following areas when reviewing a hotel:

• Energy Management / Conservation
• Waste Reduction
• Waste Management
• Water Conservation
• Hazardous Substances
• Green Health & Comfort Measures
• Staff / Management Awareness
• Social & Cultural Development & Interaction

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How do you rate hotels?

We have developed a unique questionnaire comprising of 69 questions which go towards determining a hotels green credentials. The questions are aimed at hotel managers and owners and have been designed to be quick and simple to answer. Stars are given based on the percentage of yes answers submitted.

The following percentages give the following star rating:

Percentage	Star Rating
0-9%
10-19%
20-29%
30-39%
40-49%
50-59%
60-69%
70-79%
80-89%
90-99%
100%

Reviews are completed yearly in order to follow the progress of a hotels environmental policies.

As well as star ratings based on meeting criteria met we also provide a short write-up of a hotel which will include more general information including if we feel a hotel is taking environmental things seriously, how pro-active staff ad management are as well as mentioning anything that a hotels is doing that goes above and beyond what’s happening worldwide.

How conclusive are your reviews?

We cannot say conclusively how green a hotel is as we are not experts, but we can certainly give a clear indication into how pro-active a hotel is being and exactly what they are doing.

We very much support organizations like the Green Leaf Foundation in Thailand and the work they do and advise all hotels and resorts we rate to contact them for their expert auditing and certification. We feel that by waiting for hotels to get involved and on board with these organizations is not the best solution. We feel hotels need a little push in the right direction and quickly too and is the reason we have started this project.

By rating hotels clearly by what they can easily do now, we hope that our visitors will consider and choose the greenest options when looking for a hotel in Thailand. We want to see an increased number of bookings for greener hotels on our site so that we can take this data to hotel owners to show clearly that there is a real business and well as moral argument to reduce the negative impact of their hotel on local people and the environment.

Which hotels do you rate?

We are trailing this scheme in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand in the first half of 2008 to see what response we get. If feedback is good and people like you find our system to help them in choosing a hotel then we shall roll out the rating system across Thailand as well as working towards developing an similar rating system for guesthouses and other types of more budget accommodation.