The Green Hotel Choice For Your Next Trip

Concerns about the impact that the modern lifestyle has on the environment are making more of us make greener choices – such as ecological cleaning products, reducing the amount of water we use, saving energy and recycling our waste. But these good practices needn’t stop when we travel as Thomson has audited its hotels’ environmental performance and awarded the elite hotels with a new eco-quality mark for the first time, in the form of Green Medals.

Thomson’s Green Medals recognise hotels that have achieved high standards against over 100 criteria for the environment and staff wellbeing such as whether the hotel has power saving key fobs that turn off all the lights when the holidaymaker leaves the room, use of alternative energy sources such as solar power, reuse of grey water for irrigation of the garden areas, using local products as a preference and questions relating to staff wellbeing, such as a policy to employ local staff, training for local staff to enable them to achieve management positions and providing staff benefits.

For 2006 Thomson has awarded the overall Green Medal winner status to two hotels. 14 other hotels achieved Green Medal status from the 4,500 hotels already audited.

The overall winning hotels were Coral Beach Hotel in Coral Bay, Cyprus from the Thomson A La Carte programme and Club Magic Life in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Representatives for the hotels collected the awards at the Thomson Gold Awards event at the Savoy Hotel, London on 7 November.

Peter Rothwell, managing director of Thomson, said, “Many people are making decisions in their everyday life that reduce their impact on the environment – the Green Medals enable them to choose a hotel that is run on similar principles. We hope that by showing recognition for the hotels that are managed with consideration for the environment that more hotels will be encouraged to strive for good environmental practices and achieve standards required for Green Medal status.

The Green Medal hotels can be found in Thomson, Portland and Skytours brochures and on the Thomson website.

A stay in a Green Medal hotel with Thomson starts from £435* per person for a 7 night all-inclusive stay at the 4T Sol y Mar Makadi Marine Hotel in Makadi Bay on the Red Sea Riviera. The hotel is located on the beach and guests have the option to us the spa facilities at its nearby sister hotel. This hotel

For information about Thomson’s environmental initiatives and advice for travellers on how to travel responsibly visit www.thomson.co.uk/sustainabletourism

* The price quoted is based on 2 people sharing departing from 1 May to 16 May 2007.