We’re starting to see the first signs of an environmental movement in the luxury travel market, which has up to this point mostly just used “green” initiatives to save money by not washing our towels. (If you really want to cut down on laundry, stop putting eight pillows on my room when I’m sleeping all alone.)

The BellHavens vacation home membership club so far only has Latin American homes in the Riviera Maya and Los Cabos, but their just-announced environmental initiatives will likely spread to more of these organizations.

Some of their environmental initiatives are so painfully obvious that it’s kind of sad this isn’t just standard practice.

- Compact florescent bulbs

- Solar heating for swimming pools.

- Xeriscaping in dry climates

- Upgrading from individual soap packaging to new waste-saving liquid soap dispensers

- LCD televisions and computer monitors. LCD screens use up to 75% less energy than a CRT monitor.

- Recycling paper, plastic and aluminum.

- Front Load washers and dryers. Cut water and energy use by 50% versus that of top-loading models.

- Tankless water heaters.

- Buy Local Program. Each BelleHavens home will be equipped with information on local markets, purveyors and specialty products for use in the professional-grade kitchens.

So you mean they’ll buy soap from a local craft producer instead of having it shipped all the way from France? Thank you. Call us crazy, but carting a 20-cent item halfway around the world does not make it any more luxurious. It’s time to end the charade that wealthy people don’t care about the environment and it’s time to stop equating “luxury” with “wasteful.”

Maybe those overpaid CEOs everyone is railing against would be better off downsizing. A study profiled in Business Week shows that Chief Executive Officers with huge trophy mansions underperform in the stock market.

Two finance professors studied 432 CEOs of S&P 500 companies and found that 12 percent of them lived in homes of at least 10,000 square feet, or on a minimum of 10 acres. “And their companies’ stocks? In 2005 they lagged behind those of S&P 500 CEOs living in smaller houses by 7 percent, on average,” the article says.

In the hotel world, Paris isn’t the only Hilton who knows how to spend money better than manage it. Hilton Hotels’ Stephen Bollenbach bought a 13,000-sq.-ft. L.A. house after taking the top job in 1997. In the 36 months after the purchase, Hilton trailed the S&P by 74 percent.

Overall, the showy home buyers lagged the S&P by roughly 25 percent in the three years after their CEOs’ purchases, while smaller-home buyers’ companies beat the index by 22 percent.

Perhaps the ones who wanted to prove something should have just bought a nice little vacation home with a view instead.

If you read a lot of travel magazines, you’ll note that they have an annoying tendency to lavish praise on hotels that nobody from the magazine has ever set foot in. Often it’s because the place hasn’t even been built yet. Take Condé Nast Traveler for instance, a magazine that drooled about a Brazilian hotel called Warapuru in its 2007 “It” List article.

But now word is out, with a new resort called Warapuru set to open by October. Portuguese hotelier João Vaz Guedes, with the help of designer Anouska Hempel (of the Hempel and Blakes in London), is turning the sleepy enclave—about 800 miles from Rio—into an eco-fabulous showcase: 40 pavilion rooms nestled into the virgin rain forest with reflecting pools, floating fireplaces, an all-white travertine lobby, and a terraced beach club and spa with phenomenal views of the sea. It’s sited sensitively enough to satisfy the environmentally anxious, but is sufficiently high-octane for the jet-setters—who can swoop in to the private heliport and, if they like the place enough, buy a customized villa all their own.

Has anyone from the editorial team been there to verify any of this? Of course not, because the place is barely more than a gleam in anyone’s eye at this point. To even call it a construction zone would be premature. The magazine said it would open late this year. We’ll see.

Unfortunately, this is common practice in the travel mag world. Two months ago I read a review of a South African hotel that had two major directional errors in a story that was less than 300 words long. The person writing it had obviously never even been to Johannesburg, much less that hotel. Probably an intern rewriting a press release.
Meanwhile, all of the reviews you read in Luxury Latin America are written by travel writers who have not only stepped into a finished hotel, but have put it through its paces to see how it stacks up. They don’t write cutesy stories based on a hyped-up press release just so they can call the place “hot” or “it.” When you want a real luxury hotel in Latin America, one that you can really spend the night in, check our reviews to see how they stack up.
I must say we don’t have Brazil done yet, but when we do a real expert will cover the country in person. If Warapuru is more than a mirage by then, we’ll see if the real thing lives up to the virtual promises.

(Thanks to HotelChatter for being on the case and bringing this one to light.)

Guests who use an American Express card in 2007 and book through Preferred hotels can get some extras with their room rate, which happens to also be discounted as well. Preferred is one of those umbrella groups representing a variety of hotels, so you’ve got to go search the list to figure out if any coincide with your travel plans.

These aren’t all luxury hotels, despite what the marketing may say, but there are some notable ones scattered around Latin America. Ones we have reviews posted on already include Quinta Real in Guadalajara, and Ceiba del Mar in Puerto Morales (near Cancun).

Extras can include a room upgrade, bottle of wine or champagne, or a hotel-specific amenity. Preferred’s web site doesn’t make this easy to figure out, however, so you might want to call the reservations number to figure out what’s really included: 877-323-7505

The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher just devoted a column to every day Chardonnay from Argentina and Chile, declaring the batch overall to be far superior to the oaky, industrial stuff on the shelves from Australia and elsewhere. (Link here, but available to WSJ subscribers only.)

This tasting was meant to cover wines you’d buy by the case and always have in the fridge for summer, so all retail for under $20. Overall, “the restraint and lightness of these wines was more pleasing and made them far easier to drink than the ponderous Charadonnays we’ve tasted too often lately.” None of them blew the reviewers away, but overall they were declared a good value. Here were the top choices from a blind tasting:

Montes Alpha 2005 (Casblanca Valley from Chile - Best of tasting, $16.99

Falling Star 2004 (Cuyo) from Argentina - Best value, $4.99

Walnut Crest 2006 (Central Valley) from Chile - Best value, $4.99

If you’re looking for something reliable that’s easy to find anywhere, Chilean ones with Concha y Toro on the label are a good bet–they were two of the other favorites from the tasting. Others included La Playa and Valdivieso from Chile and Navarro Correas from Argentina.