A hotel stay might have once been thought of as an opportunity to overindulge on rich buffet food, multiple luxuriant baths and mini-bar nightcaps, but is the modern business traveller more likely to demand gluten-free breakfasts, in-room yoga mats and a green-energy policy?
Properties have been responding to consumer demand as they adapt to becoming the venues in which environmentally aware,
health conscious people want to stay, eat, play, exercise and relax.
Gary Diedrichs of Green Traveler Guides argues that though many urban hotels today are doing a brilliant job of reducing their carbon footprints, much of this is behind the scenes and not obvious to guests.
"But is it enough? No. And that's because too many business travellers and other guests do not demand it loudly enough -- yet."
Surveys show that the intention is there among this market. According to a 2008 poll of 1,000 business travellers in the U.S. by Deloitte, 95 percent of respondents believe the hotel industry should be taking green initiatives and 38 percent had taken steps to determine whether a hotel was green.
Almost a third of travellers had requested that a hotel not change the sheets or towels, but had returned to find the items changed. One in five said they had stayed at a hotel that didn't allow them to be as green as they wanted to be. More than a quarter said they would be willing to pay 10 percent more to stay at a green lodging facility.
More recently, the 2012 Canadian Travel Intentions Survey found 42 percent of business travellers surveyed saying that practices like recycling and energy efficiency matter to them when choosing where to stay, up five percent from last year. The same percentage of all travellers said they would pay $1 or more to offset their carbon footprint during a stay at a property.
But for Diedrichs, hotels have huge untapped opportunity to promote healthy lodging in a broader sense. He lists some examples: Gas toxins from carpeting or wall coverings; cleaning chemicals that leave toxic residue; and local, sustainable and organic food in the kitchen.
Similar sentiments were heard at this year's World Travel Market (WTM.L) when John Firrell, managing director of London-based Considerate Hoteliers, a green hotel association, told a panel there's no excuse for hotels not to be sustainably designed.