A boutique hotel with all the character and charm you’d expect, but where all profits go to charity? Here’s a place that really exemplifies my Pampering for Prosperity mission!
The Green Hotel in Mysore, southern India, is a former maharaja’s palace, elegantly re-designed into a colonial-era crash pad. Enjoy slow cups of tea in wicker chairs, play chess in the glass conservatory, stroll gently through the rose gardens or find inspiration in the library or dedicated Writer’s Room.
You can slumber in the bed of a princess or rekindle your romance in the Honeymoon Suite, replete with four-poster bed and strewn with rose petals. And yet, despite all this fantasy indulgence and intellectual hedonism, there’s no need to feel guilty – the Green Hotel is an entirely charitable venture. All profits from the hotel go to local charities and environmental projects, the excellent, friendly staff are all former slum dwellers who have been offered permanent (not seasonal) jobs paying higher-than-average wages, and the hotel itself is green by name as well as Green by nature – the hot water is solar-powered, the food is organic, and efforts are made to keep all operations as eco-friendly as possible.
The Green Hotel might not have all the luxury trimmings a modern-day princess might require (there’s no pool or TVs in the rooms), but it’s got boutique style in abundance with conscience to boot – and that’s reason enough to celebrate with a glass of Indian bubbly.