Here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. In Part 5, we’re searching for eco-friendly travel tips and related information on the official state tourism websites of the last 10 states from South Dakota to Wyoming, alphabetically speaking, and also the tourism website for Washington DC.

South Dakota (www.travelsd.com/):- No seperate green page, and search came up with a page for the media with story ideas touting eco-tourism, which, to be clear, is a bit different from being eco-friendly. Nothing else came up.

Tennessee (www.tnvacation.com/):- No seperate green page. Search came up with a bunch of reports and presentations about how listing eco-friendly products and promoting green lodging can help attract visitors and improve tourism. Basically corporate stuff, meant to be read by tourism providers and the people who run the above website. I don’t think they read the reports, because there ain’t nothing green on it. Not a single listing. The irony kills me…

Texas (www.traveltex.com/):- No seperate green page. Searches came up with listings for a couple of events and an expo, long expired. Nothing else.

Utah (www.utah.com/):- No seperate green page. Search came up with a blog post which discusses the Zion Park Lodge being named the Sustainable Hotel of the Year at the HotelWorld Global Hospitality and Design Award Ceremony and Expo in Las Vegas. There’s also another article about how to be a minimum impact traveler in the San Flats Recreation Area.

Vermont (www.travel-vermont.com/):- No green page. The overall site is not searchable, but after clicking a gazillion pages, I bumped into something extremely useful. Inside their travel planner, they have a lodging search, which you can filter by means of various options with checkboxes. One of the checkboxes happens to be for ‘green hotels’. You check it, and click search, and it comes up with 82 green hotels.

Now I don’t believe all 82 are eco-friendly hotels - the first one is called Green Mountain Inn, and I checked out the hotel’s website and did a further google search to see if there was anything eco-friendly about it - there isn’t. I’m not going to check all 82 hotels, some may be green, some may not.

Point is, Vermont’s state tourism website at least had the thought that they should offer to filter hotels on the basis of eco-friendliness. Once you have that thought, then its just a question of implementation, and adding more info. I do hope they get around to doing it properly.

Virginia (www.virginia.org/):- Or should I say www.virginia.org/green/. Got everything you’ll need, from places to stay to green travel tips, green events, getaways, packages and green restaurants. A press release dated April 2008 says that they plan to expand the ‘Virginia Green’ website to include wineries, golf courses and Virginia’s welcome centers and rest areas, and that Virginia’s two new welcome centers, in Fredericksburg and Clear Brook, are LEED certified. All this info on the website puts Virginia right at the top of the heap. No contest.

Washington (www.experiencewa.com/):- No seperate green page. Site search and google site search combined came up with two listings - One for a whale watching cruise, and one for the Charles Lathrop Pack Experimental and Demonstration Forest. Nothing else.

Washington D.C. (www.washington.org/):- There isn’t a specific green page directly leading out of the home page, and the site search is pathetic, but a Google site search revealed a sharply increased level of interest in green travel options. There’s this page which lists the green facilities at the eco-friendly conevntion center and sustainability initiatives at Washington DC hotels. There’s also a large number of organic restaurants listed on the site which come up in the search. And lastly, a page about public transportation which touts the “485 buses using compressed natural gas or a hybrid electric drive system helping to maintain DC as an eco-friendly city.”

So basically, you’ve already got green hotels, restaurants and transport. Throw in some green attractions and put it all together on one page, and Washington DC’s tourism website could have got a pretty high score. I hope they get around to it soon.

West Virginia (www.wvtourism.com/):- There’s no green page, but they do have a link for sustainable tourism which leads to another site. The site it leads to is more of a primer for local WV businesses, detailing best practices for preserving the environment. Didn’t find anything of use to visitors. And a site search came up with 4 pages full of irrelevant results.

Wisconsin (www.travelwisconsin.com/):- No green page. Search came up one listing for the Artha Sustainable Living Center. As pointed out in the comments, they have checkboxes next to listings, where you can filter as per your preferences. There is one checkbox for ‘Travel Green Wisconsin Certified’, so you get only the green results which you can also find at www.travelgreenwisconsin.com.

Wyoming (www.wyomingtourism.org/):- No green page. Search came up with this one article on sustainable tourism which lists 3 lodging options as being eco-friendly - Twin Creek Ranch, Yellowstone National Park Lodges Operated by Xanterra, and the Alpine House Inn & Spa.

And we’re done. All 50 states + Washington DC. Special nod to Virginia for having a green page with all the info you’re going to need. Now I need some time to sift through all this, and come up with rankings for all 51 sites. I gotta warn you that I’m going to plaster the results all over the internet, so if you represent one of these 51 state tourism sites, now would be a good time to get a green page up and let me know about it. You don’t want to be branded as a state which doesn’t care about the environment.

Posted on October 20th, 2008 by PLing
Filed under: Sustainable Travel