| Abstract |
The city as a tourist destination is a complex system with its own specific urban and architectural features. Sustainable urban tourism and architecture are unquestionably interdependent. This paper offers an evaluation of the urban hotels in European countries and in Croatia selected according to the established criteria. The analysis of the results suggests that in EU countries, a great deal of effort has been made to raise the level of responsibility of all participants and to apply the principles of sustainable development in tourism architecture. Nevertheless, the established principles have been consistently applied in only a limited number of the analyzed cases. The analyses of global tourism growth indicate that urban tourism is increasingly developing. A massive influx of tourists into the cities poses considerable challenges such as: the preservation of cultural resources and the built environment, the sustainability of social interaction between local citizens and tourists, waste management, increased energy consumption, increased carbon dioxide emissions to name but a few. Urban tourism is mostly developed in cities characterized by open urban spaces, nice parks, unique architectural and urban features, attractive material and non-material heritage, efficient transport services, famous universities, scientific and research facilities, shopping malls, high-quality restaurants, dynamic street life. Cities often serve as bases to those tourists who recognize an entire region as an attractive tourist destination. International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN] offered the following sustainable principles as a basis for national programs: to limit the impact on the environment up to the carrying capacity level, to preserve the existing biological resources and biodiversity, to harmonize the consumption of non-renewable resources with the use of the renewable ones, to establish a fair distribution of benefits and costs of the use of resources, to apply technological processes which enhance the usability of the resources, to adjust economic policies to the protection of natural resources, to follow the principle of anticipation and collaboration between sectors (such as tourism, traffic and environmental protection) in decision-making processes, and to enhance and support cultural values based on sustainable principles. The availabe data indicate that presently there are 26 cities with more than in million inhabitants while 45 cities have populations between 5 and 10 millions. Globally, 54 per cent of the world population currently (2014) lives in urban areas. It is estimated that until 2050, around 66 per cent of the world population will live in cities. The EU, with 73 per cent of its population living in the cities, ranks third among the most urbanized world regions. In order to reduce the effects of the urban areas to an ecologically acceptable level, planning and design processes should take into consideration the assessment of ecological footprint, ecological deficit, urban heat islands, the availability (i.e. restriction) of land as a resource, traffic, waste, water and air quality, aerodynamic impact, and urban dust. Furthermore, planning and design processes in the context of energy-efficient architecture in sustainable urban tourism, require the application of energy-efficient concepts, elements and systems such as a sustainable urban concept, carrying capacity analysis in evaluation and choice of a site, planning the use of the site in a sustainable way, a sustainable architectural concept, the application of passive solar principles in architecture, ecology-based waste management, the participation of the users etc. There exist numerous organizations dealing with the assessment of energy-efficient, i.e. sustainable architecture in tourism. Those that are widely known are Green Leaf, Green Seal, Green Key and Eco-label, Green Tourism Business Scheme [GTBS], China's Green Hotel Standard [CGHS], LEED and BREEAM. The assessment of architecture in sustainable urban tourism was in this research preceded by an analysis of the most frequently used systems and evaluation methods. There are various criteria and structures of evaluation models. Generally, the structure of evaluation models is subdivided into three main dimensions which stem from a three-column model of sustainable development: the ecological, sociological and economic dimension. The ecological dimension can be further subdivided into: environmental protection, protection of nature and characteristics of a building. This research encompassed 142 green hotels in Europe and Croatia. The term green hotel denotes here an overarching concept for the following: green, energy-efficient, eco, environmentally friendly, sustainable hotel etc. They were selected on the basis of the available information found in literature and on Croatian and foreign web sites, which was used as a relevant criterion in their classification as green urban hotels. The hotels are situated in 58 cities in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Greece, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. After the data obtained from the survey of the green hotels had been processed, the representative examples were selected on the basis of the following criteria: the complexity of the project, originality of design solutions, the application of energy-efficient principles in their construction or renovation in the late 20th and the early 21st century, the level of their cultural, historical and geographical similarity to Croatian context. The research results show that none of the analyzed hotels meet any group of selection criteria entirely. The representative examples used in the analysis had to fulfil at least one subcriterion within seven out of ten main criteria groups. The research results indicate that a great deal of effort has been made in EU to promote the so-called green tourism. Furthermore, considerable effort has been put into ecological awareness-raising and in developing an appropriate sense of responsibility of all the participants but also on the implementation of sustainable development principles in all stages of architectural creation in urban tourism. However, a "greenwashing" effect has been detected in numerous cases. |