Sustainable Practices

What sustainability means when the nearest road is a cable car

Mountain hospitality has a harder version of every environmental problem. Water has to be pumped uphill, waste has to come back down, buildings have to hold heat at minus fifteen, and a glacier retreating a few hundred metres rewrites a ski area's future. That makes the difference between a hotel that has done the work and one that has printed a card about towels unusually easy to see, once you know where to look.

In this section we look at the things that cost money and therefore mean something: heating source and insulation, water treatment and reuse, construction materials and whether a renovation kept the original structure, food sourcing radius, staff housing, and what a property does in the shoulder season when it would be cheaper to shut. We also cover the certifications that circulate in the Alps and what each one actually audits.

Sustainability is a criterion in our selections, not a separate category of hotel — see how we choose. To browse by place, start from Switzerland, Italy or France.