This year’s meeting in Wagrain, Austria, brought together the fourteen members of this sustainable cooperation of independent hotels from Germany, Austria and South Tyrol, who all have one thing in common: they are leaders in their countries and regions when it comes to ecology and sustainability.
At the meetings, which always take place at a different member hotel, the members exchange news and experiences and develop new strategies together. This year, among other things, the further growth of the cooperation was planned. However, interested hotels have to clear high hurdles when it comes to sustainability.
The ECOINN Hotel am Campus in Esslingen and the Best Western Hotel Victoria in Freiburg, for example, lead the whole of Germany with the lowest CO2 footprint of all hotels.
Sleep Green Hotels build their sustainability on the advantages they find locally: the ECOINN Hotel, for instance, produces electricity and heat in its own hydroelectric plant right on the Neckar; it is not only energy self-sufficient but, as an energy-plus hotel, also feeds a considerable amount into the grid. Freiburg, on the other hand, has a very large volume of groundwater, which the Hotel Victoria uses with an ingenious system to provide ecological air conditioning for the entire hotel. It also generates electricity, among other things, with a photovoltaic system and small wind turbines on the roof.
The Hotel Edelweiß in Wagrain, Austria, at an altitude of 1,200 m, needs only 25% of the energy of a typical comparable wellness hotel for its wellness area. The wellness area was built to passive house standards, and the energy comes from geothermal heat, for which conditions there are very good, and a pellet system.
Sleep Green Hotels are therefore beacons in an industry that is very conservative overall and where innovative ideas – which, incidentally, are kind to both the environment and the wallet in the medium and long term – are still too little recognised and used. They are successful examples of innovative and environmentally friendly hotel management without blinkers.