The “International Day of Forests” has been celebrated on the 21^st of March since the 1970s. At that time, it was created in response to global forest destruction – and sadly, the topic is as relevant today as it was then. We show you how active our Green Pearls are on the subject and what they are doing to protect the world’s forests.

Villa wonderland among the trees

Situated in a hilly landscape surrounded by lush forests, the Keemala villa wonderland offers a retreat from everyday life and has always attached great importance to the preservation of the trees. Not felling any trees posed a great challenge to the team when building the hotel and so, in the end, they simply built around the trees in several places and today you will sometimes see trees simply growing through the roofs and pools.

Keemala is all about the culture of four mystical ancient tribes from Phuket and the lifestyle of the We-ha (Sky) clan is reflected in the design of the treehouses with pools: they extend over two floors and look as though they are hanging from trees. The interior of the seven tree houses is decorated with furniture hanging from the ceiling and cozy, cocoon-like beds and loungers.

Read more: World Wildlife Day: a passion for nature and animals – everyday

A green oasis in the middle of the city

In the Creativhotel Luise, it was not possible to integrate the architecture of the hotel into nature due to the inner-city location in Erlangen, Bavaria. Therefore, the approach has simply been interpreted the other way around: Nature should be integrated into the architecture! The hotel succeeds at this in many places, from the green inner courtyard and roof, the large, near-natural garden with insect hotels and larch trunks on the facade – everything is intended to be as close to nature as possible.

No tree may be felled

Tongsai Bay on Koh Samui was founded in 1987 by Khun Akkorn, who took environmental protection very seriously when he built his hotel. He spent three months sleeping on the beach in a four-poster bed to ensure that no trees were felled, no animals were harmed and nature was treated as respectfully as possible during the construction of his hotel. Tongsai Bay is still nestled in nature and on a private bay and no trees have been felled there to date.

Read more: Eco-friendly sunscreen: what does sun protection have to do with corals?

Planting trees together

Last year on October 3^rd, many of our partner hotels planted trees for the Day of German Reunification. During #Einheitsbuddeln, a Germany-wide tree planting campaign, over 111,392 trees were planted according to the organizers – a fantastic achievement!

Last winter many trees fell down on the Gröllberg in Ramsau. The Berghotel Rehlegg has, therefore, joined the mountain forest offensive of the Amt für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten Traunstein and together 100 larches were planted on Gröllberg on the day of German unification – and more are still to come! With your stay you can even provide for more trees yourself: Since most guests arrive at the Berghotel Rehlegg on Fridays, a tree is planted for every 5th guest arriving on Friday. In this way, between 3,000 and 4,000 trees will be planted throughout the year. If you are one of the selected guests, you will receive a small wooden keyring with a deer head on one side and a tree of life on the other as a symbol.

By the way, many of our hotel partners are committed to the preservation of the forests all year round: The Mawell Resort in Langenburg is perfectly integrated into the surrounding nature and here you can swim, sauna, jog or just enjoy the view among the treetops. During construction, care was taken to ensure the forests were disturbed as little as possible – fortunately, the forest is therefore intact and does not need any more or new trees. The Landgut Stober near Berlin even owns 125,000 square meters of its own forest and also supports reforestation projects in India and Panama.

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