Every year Creta Maris produces an Annual Sustainability Report to communicate with guests and other stakeholders on the status, milestones reached, and forward-focused plans of the resort’s initiatives. In accordance with the determined effort to be a sustainability leader in Greece, it’s vitally important to focus keenly on Crete’s water resources.

The island of Crete has limited water resources and a demand for the supply that is progressing geometrically. Resource management and sustainable practices on the island are geared toward achieving a hydrological balance that is forward-thinking and sustainable in the future. Last year, resort administrators made great strides to address such problems as promoting better understanding in the local community, stakeholder participation, policy design, implementation, and active cooperation among end users.

In the macro-view, islander stakeholders are focused on issues like managed aquifer recharge, village consumption and their connection to wastewater treatment plants, erosion, flooding, and ecological river flows. For the team at Creta Maris, the role is to micro-manage this vital role.

To this end, Creta Maris established a set of key milestones back in 2017 so that the resort could play a more significant role in creating a better overall Crete sustainability effort. Several of the resort’s benchmarks and strategies are geared to promote water conservation:

• Creta Maris as a sustainability promoter holding ongoing briefings of staff via personal presentations, lectures, and seminars, in order to become the example.
• Reducing energy and water consumption – Creta Maris’ management and staff are dedicated to making an everyday effort to use less energy and water resources to protect the environment.
• The “We do local” philosophy – Adopting this philosophy as a core value, Creta Maris becomes an integral part of the local community, which in turn connects our collective sustainability philosophies.
• Enhancing a responsible business model – Creta Maris is an award-winning member of responsible, social, and environmental operation certification organizations like Travelife, The Green Key, Blue Flag, and many other vital entities for a sustainable future.
• Ongoing innovations in conservation – Creta Maris Resort innovates in the use of electric powered vehicles, sourcing close-by product sources, using eco-friendly detergents, using re-usable cups and biodegradable straws, and in overall recycling efforts.

However, setting milestones is easy, making the values behind them part of our resort’s culture is the challenging part. Through constant training and brainstorming with our staff, Creta Maris evolved into a hospitality family with a culture of sustainability. Not only are management and staff dedicated to saving energy and water resources, but we also find that influencing our guests is the cement that will build a truly eco-friendly environment of business on Crete, and elsewhere in Greece.

In the realm of energy conservation, we’ve started making the transition to renewable energy by using solar panels to heat water, using LP gas in our kitchens and laundries, replacing incandescent lamps with LEDs, and through staff training.

To address the critical water situation, Creta Maris has already leaped ahead of most other resorts by taking affirmative actions like:

• Drilling wells
• Operating desalination units
• Using reverse osmosis and filtration systems
• Practicing automatic night watering the green areas and the organic fields of the hotel
• Using drip irrigation and underground irrigation systems with reduced water evaporation
• Adding water reduction filters to all taps of the hotel.
• Using refillable water bottles instead of one-use bottle water for guests

In addition, even before our guests decide to book their reservations, we let them know about all our sustainability efforts via our websites, advertisements, social media, and phone conversations. When they arrive, our guests are invited to take part in these conservation activities through tours, environmental workshops, and traditional events like grape harvests, winemaking, and so forth.

Creta Maris has designed a far-reaching plan of action as a sustainable hotel business and continues monitoring in order to ascertain the daily impact of these efforts. The resort’s culture has been changed forever, and the team is on board not only for taking responsibility for Creta Maris Resort’s eco-footprint but for taking a stand alongside partners for making Crete a sustainable destination for the far-reaching future.