Just Look For The Leaf

Plan a green trip with TripAdvisor's GreenLeaders Programme, and only choose the hotels and B&Bs dedicated to environmentally-friendly practices.

Autor*in Jo Wilkinson, 08.06.14

Plan a green trip with TripAdvisor’s GreenLeaders Programme, and only choose the hotels and B&Bs dedicated to environmentally-friendly practices.

In a recent TripAdvisor survey, the team behind the travel website found that more than a quarter of European travellers actively made an eco-friendly travel choice over the past year, and one third are planning to do so in the year to come. This is great news and proves our wandering friends are keen to make their footprints green around the globe. What’s not so great is they’re finding it hard to do so: nearly half of these same travellers don’t feel they’ve got enough information to know what hotels are sustainably hot and what are not.

TripAdvisor has jumped on board to help push European travellers in the right direction. Their initiative, TripAdvisor GreenLeaders, highlights hotels and B&Bs that engage in eco-friendly practices.

“We know a lot of travellers in Europe want to be savvy about the eco-friendly choices they make on holiday but they don’t always know where to go to find that information,” says Jenny Rushmore, director of responsible travel at TripAdvisor. They’ve sought to change this for their community of travellers by evaluating everything from towel re-use to composting and solar panels.

If a hotel is deemed to be green, a leaf is displayed on their listing and they’re ranked as either Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum.  While I’d like to hope most accommodation providers embed eco-friendly practices into their daily routines and infracstructure, I’m interested in seeking out and staying in those ranked as the top spots.

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