PRESS RELEASE
Green Globe Launches New Sector for the Spa and Wellness Industry
The spa industry philosophy of healthy lifestyles is a concept based on environmentally-conscious roots. At odds with this is the industry’s unprecedented worldwide growth, with the creation of new spa resorts, the upgrade of existing spa facilities and the development of entire spa towns all impacting the sector.
With over 100 million active spa goers globally, this burgeoning tourism sector is like no other in its need to increase its expansion whilst reducing its exposure to reduced market share from growing consumer awareness of, and demand for, good environmental practices.
Green Globe’s new environmental benchmarking initiative for the spa industry, developed with the assistance of Six Senses Resorts and Spas and the Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre (STCRC), is a starting point for operators who are unsure of the best way to direct their efforts to reduce their operation’s environmental impact.
For Six Senses Resorts and Spas, General Manager Jamie Waring’s key objective for the adoption of any environmental programme was that it did not sacrifice the quality of the experience customers were seeking. “Six Senses has been a driving force in environmentally friendly spa development and operations, so it was a natural progression that Green Globe and Six Senses should combine resources to develop indicators to benchmark the spa industry.”
The programme specifically addresses environmental factors that are unique to the spa sector, placing particular emphasis on water wastage, chemical usage and energy consumption. Prior to this, benchmarking programmes had been linked with the resorts and hotels in which spas operate.
Stewart Moore, CEO of EC3 Global, the management company of Green Globe, commends the spa industry for taking a leadership position for sustainability, saying “the push for this new sector came from the spa industry itself. They were the first to recognise that industries could no longer continue to be as resource consumptive as they had been in the past. Spa managers were keen to take responsibility for their own businesses.”
For more information on Six Senses Resorts and Spas, please visit http://www.sixsenses.com
Green Globe is the international benchmarking and certification programme for the travel and tourism industry, based on the Agenda 21 principles for Sustainable Development endorsed by 182 Heads of State at the United Nations Rio De Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992. Green Globe is managed by EC3 Global, a subsidiary of the Sustainable Tourism Co-operative Research Centre
For more information on the Green Globe programme, please email greenglobe@ec3global.com.