SustainableBusiness.com Newswire
08/11/2010 03:43 PM ET
News from: Hilton Worldwide
Hilton Hotels Now in Expedia, Travelocity Green Hotel Program
BELLEVUE, Wash. - August 11, 2010 - Expedia.com®, the world's leading online travel agency, announced today that a first wave of 300-plus properties using LightStayTM within the Hilton Worldwide portfolio of hotel brands will be added to the Expedia.com Green Hotel Program.
LightStay is Hilton Worldwide's proprietary sustainability measurement system, on par with many of the best-in-class systems globally. With the addition of these hotels, the Expedia.com Green Hotel program now includes more than 2,000 hotels, giving Expedia.com one of the most comprehensive selections of eco-friendly travel options among all online travel agencies.
"Expedia.com is committed to helping travelers find the broadest range of 'green' properties in the industry," said Tim MacDonald, senior vice president and general manager, Expedia.com. "The inclusion of Hilton Worldwide's brands, that use the LightStay system, in Expedia.com's Green Hotel Program helps fulfill that commitment."
LightStay is Hilton Worldwide's proprietary system developed to calculate and analyze environmental impact of its properties. The system measures energy and water use and waste and carbon output at the company's hotels around the globe. It specifically analyzes performance across 200 operational practices, such as housekeeping, paper product usage, food waste, chemical storage, air quality and transportation. By December 31, 2011, all of the more than 3,600 properties within Hilton Worldwide's global portfolio of brands will use LightStay.
And Travelocity announced it will add hundreds of properties to its Green Hotel Directory that have been validated by Hilton Worldwide's innovative sustainability measurement system, LightStayTM. Travelocity is awarding its coveted "eco-friendly hotel" leaf tag to more than 300 elite properties among the Hilton Worldwide portfolio, each of which has made significant strides toward sustainability.
Travelocity is the only major online travel company that tags green hotels site-wide. "Our eco-friendly leaf is a symbol consumers can trust and it makes shopping a snap," says Alison Presley, manager of Travelocity's Travel for Good® program. "We're excited to award it to over 300 of Hilton Worldwide's green properties."
To date, Travelocity has flagged more than 2,200 hotels across the globe with the eco-friendly leaf and the company works with an elite group of certification programs. To be listed in the Green Hotel Directory, a hotel must be certified by a second- or third-party program that aligns with the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria and have an on-site audit.
The criteria, which offers a comprehensive picture of what it means to be sustainable, was developed by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, a global coalition of U.N. bodies, research and academic institutions, social and environmental NGOs, and certification programs.
To confirm the effective implementation and validity of LightStay, Hilton Worldwide commissioned KEMA-Registered Quality, Inc., a management systems assessment and certification company, to perform a series of third-party audits of LightStay. The extensive audit revealed that LightStay is a best-in-class system for measuring and analyzing sustainability performance data at hotel properties.
The Expedia.com Green Hotel Program launched in April 2008 and now features more than 2,000 supply partners and more than 80 green certification programs. Travelers who are interested in the Expedia.com eco-friendly travel options can now book at any one of the thousands of green-certified properties listed on Expedia.com including the recently added properties within the Hilton Worldwide portfolio of hotel brands.
For more information on Expedia.com's green travel options, visit http://www.expedia.com/green.
To learn more about Hilton Worldwide's LightStay, visit http://www.hiltonworldwide.com/.
For more information please contact:
Claire Delacruz
cohn&wolfe
310.967.2917
claire.delacruz@cohnwolfe.com
