Starwood, a hospitality development and management company, has launched "ELEMENT," a new environmentally sustainable brand of hotels. ELEMENT hotels will be built utilizing only LEED guidelines, and the plan is to open twenty in the next year. The first to launch is in Lexington MA, which, coincidentally, is also the site of the first military engagement of the American Revolution. If Starwood is taking advantage of this fact by using Lexington to make its first shot in the Green Revolution, kudos to them.
The ELEMENT brand is for the extended-stay traveler and is designed with such features as energy efficient appliances and lighting, water efficient faucets, and low VOC paints and carpets with up to 100% recycled content.
One of the more interesting amenities for the ELEMENT is that guests driving hybrid cars are rewarded with priority parking. Now, this feature raises an interesting question. Is it actually a kind of rating system for those who practice a higher level of sustainability?
Is it caste system? How will it be gauged? For example, if a person drives a Prius to an ELEMENT hotel but doesn't have a solar array in their home or a dual flush toilet and they love McDonalds, should they really get a better parking spot than someone who rented a respectable four-cylindar Kia, lives in an Energy Star rated home, and purchases only fair trade and local goods?
The idea that Starwood has created the ELEMENT hotel is phenomenal. However, rating guests on their perceived environmental commitment solely by judging their cars might not actually be a great idea.
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