Washington, D.C., August 22, 2007—The Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS), January 28–30, 2008, at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, Calif., attracts the lodging industry's leading hotel executives, investors, lenders, developers and professional advisory community. This year, programming will focus on educating the industry's leaders on best practices and the importance of environmentally-friendly green hotels with a new green hotels track that includes a series of sessions discussing how to develop, convert, operate, and design a green hotel.
"While a small number of people in the hotel industry have been promoting the logic and merits of 'green/sustainable' development and operations for decades, the interest in the past few years has shot up like a rocket, not unlike the global population growth chart in Al Gore's award winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth," said Jim Burba, BHN president and ALIS chair. "Green is now being embraced by developers and owners and is being discussed in the boardrooms of the largest companies in the travel industry."
One of the highlights of the ALIS convention is always the presentation of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants (ISHC) Pioneer Award. The Pioneer Award was established in 1996 to recognize an individual or organization for making an outstanding contribution, achievement, or improvement to the hospitality industry. This year's winner is a pioneer of the green movement—developer and civil engineer Stanley Selengut, one of the fathers of "ecotourism."