Cuffern Manor receives a Green Key Award

Cuffern Manor receives one of the first Green Key awards in Wales.

http://goo.gl/Xlyl0q

Green Key  is an eco-label awarded to around 2,400 hotels and other sites in 47 countries worldwide

We were pleased to visit Tenby on April Ist to receive this award from Richard Hammond

(“Not the bloke on Top Gear (though I’ve got used to the disappointment when I turn up to review a hotel and the owners are expecting to meet the TV celebrity and not me). But anyway, here I am, the founder of greentraveller and generally the bloke who looks after the site.I have worked in sustainable transport and tourism media for over 17 years, including writing a weekly column in the Guardian, a monthly column, The Responsible Traveller, for Geographical magazine (the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society), editing the travel section of Green magazine (distributed by the Guardian), and a column, Go Green, in National Geographic Traveller magazine.)

Being ‘green’ means different things to different people. In tourism it is easy to see how tourism can destroy the environment that attracts people in the first place. Richard told the story of the person who wasn’t sure if he had been on holiday to The Gambia or The Dominican Republic. We know that our guests want to experience the unspoilt beauty of the coast, the islands and the wildlife,  curated for us  by the National Park.  We know our guests like the fact that our food comes from our own organic garden or from  independent local producers, not just for quality but also because our suppliers spend their money locally as well, keeping our economy bouyant. We also have invested in  green energy through the installation of solar PV panels and a biomass pellet boiler, removing the dependency on oil and most of the gas we previously used. We also value and support the locality  around us through a variety of community intiatives which we hope adds in a small way to the quality of life here.

So thanks Green Key and Keep Wales Tidy, who manage the scheme in Wales, for giving Cuffern Manor this recognition.

Green Key aims to

• raise the awareness of leisure establishment staff and clients,
• increase the use of sustainable methods of operation and technology,
• run ecologically sound and responsible businesses, and thereby
• reduce resource, energy usage