May 02 2008
Asia Hotels Going Green
The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has announced plans to take up the green challenge.
PATA will be investing in two sustainable tourist projects “as part of a range of measures to reduce the carbon impact of the PATA CEO Challenge.”
In his opening comments at the Challenge, outgoing-PATA Chairman Brian Deeson said that PATA would contribute to Thai Royal Project, a sustainable development initiative in northern Thailand, as well as the not-for-profit organisation Atmosfair, which manages carbon-reducing projects worldwide.
In January 2008, PATA signed an agreement with EC3 Global, managers of the Green Globe brand in Asia Pacific, to “use its science and systems to help significantly reduce the carbon footprint of key elements of the CEO Challenge”. Green Globe is the leading international environmental benchmarking and certification programme for the travel and tourism industry.
Most of their attention is being focused on participating in the Royal Project in Thailand.
“While this is new territory for us, we have tried to do everything possible to reduce our emissions, as well as learn how we can improve our performance for future events. Our approach is to mitigate where possible and offset where we can’t,” MR Deeson said.
