News & Stories
In many places around the world, there are mammoth green projects that are almost turning visions into nightmares. The Saudi city of Neom is apparently running out of money, the Green Wall in the Sahara has withered away and South Korea's Smart City Songdo is stagnating, as is a model socialist city in China.
2024 was a record year for many airlines. However, air travel is increasingly being criticised for its poor environmental footprint. The CO2 offsetting business has become a large and very opaque market. Every country can now decide for itself what it does. The original idea has been watered down.
The Austrian Federal Railway is expanding its network with night trains. From Germany, there are more and more attractive routes throughout Europe. Other providers are following suit.
To ensure that the Maldives remains a dream holiday destination, local hotels and resorts are committed to environmental and species protection. They produce key rings, jewellery and furniture from washed-up plastic waste, care for coral reefs and call for joint beach clean-ups.
Biodiversity is endangered worldwide - we need to act rather than negotiate. After a failure four months ago, poorer and richer states managed to reach a compromise at the COP16 continuation in Rome last week - without the USA.
Demand for time and cost-efficient construction is increasing. Solutions must be found. One variant is serial modular construction, which is already being used in the hotel industry in some cases: for both functional motorway service-station hotels as well as lifestyle products. Novum Hospitality CEO David Etmenan and expert Carsten Fritz from NXTbau give us an overview of the pros and cons of modular construction.
Climate change has picked up speed and the effects are being felt worldwide. However, countermeasures need to be implemented more quickly in order to achieve net zero in the long term. The global travel and tourism industry has therefore drawn up a new roadmap for its climate targets.
The European Union is changing its approach to sustainability rules, backing away from some of its strict environmental standards. The EU taxonomy financial adviser's recent statement on "taxonomy backpedaling", is a result of growing pressure from countries like France and Germany, along with industries struggling to keep up with regulations.
Cork everywhere. On the walls, the floor, the ceiling, even furniture and decorative objects are made from this renewable raw material. Because at Milan Design Week, the material with the somewhat dusty image is taking centre stage in the "Casa Cork".
Spain is forging ahead to balance economical costs and sustainable opportunities. At Fitur in Madrid, Spanish experts and hoteliers amazed the audience with concrete examples: Benidorm is already managing urban tourism with smart water meters; Valencia provided the first figures from the model room "IT Room 2.01"; and hotels on the Balearic Islands are using AI to reduce waste massively and quickly.