BECOMING GREEN - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 190

flight home, passing new villas along the way that were second homes for foreigners, a key
concern in Costa Rica as it is in France and Britain.
Waiting at the airport, I reviewed all the categories for sustainable tourism. The Sea
Lion passed them all. Its greatest triumph was in category D: “Maximize benefits to the en-
vironment and minimize negative impacts.” The Sea Lion actions were impeccable, espe-
cially for “conserving biodiversity, ecosystems and landscapes.” No wildlife were captured,
consumed or traded. The naturalists were so keen on this rule that we were forbidden to
collect shells. Isabel gave a shout-out to Riley, a teenager from Texas, who photographed
a quirky collage of shells in place and left them scattered on the sand rather than pocket
them.
Beyond our individual journey, the company supports local environmental groups as
well as the daunting goal of creating a “panther path,” a wide swath of protected areas from
Mexico through Panama to give the great panthers room to survive. Its website contains a
“commitment to sustainable travel” section describing how it does business and the local
groups it supports.
After this experience I think I trust the National Geographic , but how about all the
other groups and hotels that say they are sustainable, or “green,” in Costa Rica? Upscale
hotels like the Four Seasons Resort and Spa in northwest Costa Rica charge as much as
$2,000 a night, advertising “eco-activities,” a neighboring dry tropical forest and two “un-
spoiled beaches” along with an Arnold Palmer Golf Course, a spa, paddleboats and tennis.
Is this ecotourism? Or is it more like the J. W. Marriott Guanacaste Resort and Spa built in
the same region on the Pacific Ocean, with classic spa, gym and restaurants, yet claiming
only to be luxurious, not an ecoestablishment.
In most surveys tourists say they will pay a little extra for vacations that respect the envir-
onment. Governments have given subsidies to hotels to make them environment-friendly.
This adds up to big business in calling yourself “green.” Not surprisingly, hotels and des-
tinations around the world are now advertising themselves as just that: green.
Companies now talk about the triple bottom line—profit, people and the plan-
et—especially in the tourism industry. At Abu Dhabi's World Green Tourism conference
a debate broke out over the definition of “green.”
“How can some of these places pretend they are green? Building more hotel rooms that
use less air-conditioning; that's not green, it's using less energy. Being green is much more
than that,” said Gopinath Parayil, founder of Blue Yonder, an ecotourism venture in South
India that has more awards than it can count. “This is more green-washing.”
When it was his turn on stage, Parayil showed how his travel group helped revive tra-
ditional Kerala arts and music, clean up rivers, restore four-hundred-year-old homes and
recover local history—all the while making a profit.
The hotel executives were just as confident singing the praises of their operations by
defining “green” to fit their own situation. The tourism industry is filled with confusing