Eco Hotels

Sustainability claims in hospitality are uneven. Some properties run genuine programmes — composting, locally-generated energy, rewilding the surrounding land, hiring and training from the immediate community. Others print "eco-luxury" on the towel cards and call it a programme. Our editors are slow to add hotels here, and quick to remove them when a claim turns out to be marketing rather than practice.
 
These are the ones we'd defend to a sceptic. In the Scottish Highlands, Alladale Wilderness Reserve rewilds a hundred square kilometres of Sutherland; in Ecuador, La Selva sits deep in the biodiversity of Yasuní National Park. In Greece, Mikro Papigo 1700 — named Europe's Most Sustainable Hotel by the Boutique Hotel Club — occupies seven stone buildings in the car-free UNESCO village of Papigo, while Onar Andros farms its own organic produce among the stone villas of a Natura 2000 valley. Further afield, Chitwa Chitwa anchors private game-reserve land in South Africa's Sabi Sand, and Fond Doux works a 19th-century Saint Lucian cocoa plantation still in production.
 
Travel can't be made zero-impact. But the right hotel makes the impact smaller — and gives something back to the place that hosts it.