The European Union funded SWITCH-Asia Greening Sri Lanka Hotels project, implemented by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce had been in operation since 2009 and has successfully engaged 170 hotels throughout Sri Lanka, helping them to enhance their environmental performance through improvement of energy, water and waste management.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday directed Sri Lanka Coast Conservation Department officials to take legal action against persons polluting the coastline and constructing unauthorized buildings along the coastline.

The President made this observation during a discussion on coastal zone management and development at Temple Trees yesterday.

Coast Conservation Department officials pointed out to President Rajapaksa that the coastline is at a risk of being polluted, due to the exposure to wastage from unauthorized constructions and hotels close to the coastal belt.

The Municipal Corporation will be holding meetings with hotel owners and grain market members for segregation of garbage at source in order to tackle the problems being faced in solid waste management in the city.

The waste from the hotels and grain market is in large quantity and comprises of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. Officials said, if garbage from these sources is segregated, the biodegradable waste can be dumped at the dumping ground, while the remaining could be sent to the Garbage Plant for processing.

Everybody travels and everybody stays at hotels one time or another but travelling comes with a steep carbon as well as water footprint. For example, every day you stay at a hotel, you might burn enough fossil fuels to release more than 33 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The good news is that many hotels and holiday resorts have become aware of the issue and are introducing plans that makes your stay more eco-friendly.

World's Major Hotel Chains Come Together to Standardize Carbon Accounting

A group of international hotels is collaborating on a groundbreaking initiative to standardize carbon accounting in the hospitality industry. The Carbon Measurement Working Group aims to reach a consensus on a single methodology for calculating carbon footprints and consistent metrics for communicating emissions. Currently, carbon measurement metrics vary widely which can lead to confusion among guests and investors. Additionally, the number of methodologies and tools in use make transparency within the industry difficult to achieve.

A hotel in orbit, lunar sightseeing flights and luxury rides into the cosmos -- all are part of Russia's vision to ensure it is not left behind in the growing space tourism industry.

Russian firms unveiled their plans at the country's premiere air show this week at Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, saying the race was on to build a new craft to take people into space following the retirement of NASA's space shuttle in April.

This monsoon, top hotels such as The Leela, Taj and ITC Maratha are using their roof-tops for a different purpose – for rain-water harvesting.

The project to use roof-tops to collect rain-water has been implemented in Leela's hotels across Mumbai, Kovalam, Bangalore, Goa, Udaipur and Chennai, said Mr Ravindra Kumar Singh, Leela's Senior Vice-President – Projects and Engineering.
Capacity

The storage capacity provided for collection of rain water is 300 cu metres installed in Kovalam as well as Chennai.

Plans to build two new hotels in South Africa's flagship Kruger National Park have sparked a racial fight rekindling the country's troubled apartheid past.

South Africa National Parks (SANParks) wants to construct the four-star safari lodges inside Kruger to attract new visitors who are willing to spend a little more money for comfort as opposed to roughing it in a more economic campsite.

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The Rajasthan Government has started consultations with operators of private hotels around Ranthambhore National Park in Sawai Madhopur and Sariska Tiger Reserve in Alwar to finalise the quantum of cess to be imposed by the end of the year, as directed by the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment.

According to official sources, the Tiger Task Force headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had

The new draft eco-tourism policy guidelines for