Sustainability

Novotel Athenes hotel in late April cleaned up the park located on the corner of Liosion and Michael Voda streets in central Athens and planted grass and 350 plants throughout the premises.

“Tour operators and travel agencies need to modernize their way of operation and provide high quality services and specialized products in a responsible and professional manner,” Yiorgos Telonis, president of Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) said in late January at the official launch of “EOS CODE,” the European Code of Practice on Environment Oriented Sustainability.

The National Committee for the Green Key recognition has awarded all four of the P.A.P Corp. hotels (recently renovated Astoria in Thessaloniki, Alexander the Great Beach in Kryopigi, Agionissi Resort in Amoliani and Xenia in Ouranoupoli) with a “Green Key.”

Greece this year was awarded blue flags for 425 beaches and eight marinas, according to a recent announcement by the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature. Last year 430 Greek beaches were awarded blue flags.

TUI Hellas announced it would tackle the global environmental threat through the implementation of a carbon-offset program to balance the emissions created by the tour operator’s privately owned tour buses.

Daskalantonakis Group recently announced the application of Green initiatives—within the framework of its GreenPolicy—at its Classical Hotels chain. The group aims to co-produce electricity with the aid of natural gases and with a special procedure of frost absorption.

The first flight by a commercial airline to be powered partly by biofuel recently took place as a Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew between London Heathrow Airport and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. Virgin’s Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent biofuel tank that it said could provide 20% of the engine’s power. The three other engines were capable of powering the plane on conventional fuel had there been a problem.

Mayor of Athens Nikitas Kaklamanis announced the Greek capital is now a member of C40 Cities. C40 is an international initiative comprised of 40 major cities that have joined forces to help combat climate change.

Star Alliance recently took an initiative to plant some 3,000 Greek olive trees in the prefecture of Ancient Olympia. Representatives of nine of the 17 members of the Star Alliance network – Austrian Airlines, Air New Zealand, ANA-All Nippon Airways, bmi (British Midland International,) Lufthansa, SAS-Scandinavian Airlines System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss International Airlines and Thai Airways International – that are represented in Greece, met with Kyriakos Reres, president of the archeological receipts fund of the Ministry of Culture, and agreed to plant the olive trees in areas designated by the governing authorities.

Hellenic Seaways honored International Environment Day (5/6/07) with the organization of a beach clean up on the islands of Chios and Aegina.