Avra Collection takes eco friendly accommodation policies very seriously. After all, Chania, and especially Kolymvari, where some of the Avra Collection hotels are located, are among the most environmentally unique places in Europe.
Indeed, our persistence on sustainable hospitality in Chania, Crete has a lot to do with our love for the marvelous natural environment in this corner of Europe. And eco friendly accommodation and green hotel policies are the best way to go, if we not only want to preserve the environment, but to enable it to flourish.
In this manner, we take full advantage of the modern know-how in green hotel policies, and we carefully apply the best – and most fit – of them to our hotels. These include:
- Energy consumption reduction systems.
- Water consumption reduction systems.
- Automatic systems to assist in lowering consumption of electricity, in regards to air conditioning and lighting.
- Use of green, eco friendly products in both housekeeping procedures and in guests’ toiletries.
- Extensive use of waste recycling in all activities of our daily operation, including recycling of oil used for cooking, which is recycled to machine oil.
- Continuous awareness and training of the hotel staff in order to constantly apply our policies of sustainable hospitality.
- Informing our guests and enabling them to assist themselves in the protection of the environment and the reduction of water and energy consumption.
By applying a total system of eco friendly accommodation policies, we manage to achieve impressive results in protecting the environment and natural resources. And we get better each and every year.
All the hotels of our group use extensive sustainable hospitality: Avra City in Chania city, and Avra Apartments in both Chania city and Kolymvari. But the hotel that applies some of the most advanced environmental, green policies in Crete, is our flagship 5* hotel, Avra Imperial in Kolymvari.
Avra Imperial, the biggest hotel of Avra Collection, lies in a magnificent natural environment, in the outskirts of Kolymvari village west of Chania city. Kolymvari is located on the south side of the Rodopou Peninsula in west Crete, a Natura 2000 environmentally protected area with many endemic species of animals and plants.
At the heart of Avra Imperial’s eco friendly accommodation policies lies an integrated Energy Management System. This system achieves great energy consumption results in all the hotel’s buildings, by smartly controlling the cooling and heating procedures, the ventilation, and the lighting (partly).
This is done by the use of smart system technology that calibrates all the above procedures in order to minimize energy consumption. The system is also responsible for the reduction of air pollutants in the hotel’s premises.
Some of the other advanced – and pioneering in Chania and Crete – green hotel policies that are used by Avra Imperial are the following:
- The installation of a geothermal system that provides clean energy for the daily operation of the hotel. Geothermal is a practically inexhaustible kind of energy, as it is produced naturally by the internal heat of the earth’s crust.
- The installation of 250 solar panels that provide solar energy, which, combined with the geothermal energy, significantly lower the environmental footprint of the hotel.
- Green roofs: Some hotel buildings have roofs that have been planted following certain specifications. Green roofs reduce air pollutants, lower the surface water run-off, and properly calibrate the temperature in the interior of the buildings, leading to a substantial reduction of energy consumption for heating or cooling.
- Using through smart systems the escaping heat of the air-conditioning to provide hot water, including the heating of the indoor pool.
- Applying advanced water saving techniques.
You can read in detail all our relevant eco friendly accommodation and sustainable hospitality policies in the “Avra Green” page. The end result of all this actions is the protection of the natural environment and of the energy resources.
Today, many hotels use a variety of green policies in order to be more environmentally friendly. But Avra Collection, and especially its flagship Avra Imperial hotel, take eco friendly accommodation and sustainable hospitality in Chania, Crete, to a totally new level.
