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Lotus Tours Ltd.
P.O. Box 1355
Manhasset, NY 11030

Tel (212) 267-5414
Fax (212) 267-0940
info@lotustours.us


Member
IATA, ARC, PATA
History    



A brief history

"Tourism provides the best incentive for conservation and preservation as it creates a profit motive for people and governments to go green."

Michael Kong, Director, Lotus Tours / Second Nature,         
Chair, Environment Committee, Pacific Asia Travel Assn, NY Chapter         





mid-1970s

Lotus Tours operated low impact vacation packages with Pan American Airways, Eastern Airlines and Air France/UTA that featured destinations including Rafaella de Laurentiis's Maarara Resort in Tahiti, the Saints Islands of the French West Indies, and Stan Selengut's Maho Bay on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Island which was probably the first genuinely sustainable resort that appealed to the mass market.


1980s

Magic Carpet Video (MCV), a Lotus subsidiary, produced inflight video entertainment for Pan American Airways including a segment entitled "Footprints" which promoted tourism as a friend of the environment™. The monthly infotainment program also featured interviews with then eco warriors Ted Turner (whom many people know), Richard Branson (for his Necker Island), and Robertson Collins (whom many don't know) for his master plan to regreen Singapore's waterfront and save its heritage sites. MCV also created a magazine-style program for the Financial News Network entitled "The Future By Design," hosted by former CBS News anchor Mario Machado, that focused on urban ecology.


1991

MCV changed its name to EcoVision to focus on environmental issues and was a participant in the 1st World Congress on Ecotourism in Miami where it presented the position that ecotourism should not simply be nature tours but principles incorporated into all travel, especially mass market travel.


1992-93

EcoVision was a participant at the Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, as well as numerous conferences, meetings, workshops and symposia sponsored by numerous entities such as NGOs, the National Park Service, the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and various other organizations.


1994

EcoVision shifted its focus from reporting on people talking about ecotourism to promoting it, and established Environmental Resorts & Hotels (ERH), a not-for-profit association of hotels and resorts that were required to meet or exceed a checklist of 27 lifecycle requirements for environmentally responsible development, including building and operational standards that incorporated recycling, precycling, conservation and eco-restoration initiatives.


1995

Together with the Environmental Bamboo Foundation, ERH sponsored press trips to promote bamboo as an alternative material for hotel floorings, furnishings and other uses in lieu of traditional hardwoods.

ERH morphed into the tour operator Second Nature: Vacations for Body, Mind & Planet™ which targeted the Tier 2 eco market - what Simmons Research calls 'the Convenient Greens.' Among its destinations, Second Nature created a program for the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida, on ways that people can take control of their environmental destiny at home, school and workplace.

Second Nature became a member of the Co-Op America Green Business Network.

Second Nature became member of the American Institute of Architects' Committee On the Environment and invited to participate in the St John project on sustainable tourism design.


1997

Lotus Tours was appointed travel and international promotion coordinator for Health Expo, America's first major consumer and media event on complementary medicine, held at the former New York Coliseum.


1998 and beyond.

Second Nature was invited to the USA advisory board of Oberoi Hotels.

Second Nature is developing a chain of resorts fabricated entirely of recycled and renewable materials and powered solely by alternative energy sources.




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