The first carbon neutral hotel in the Balearics and for the Melia Hotel Group, Villa Le Blanc Gran Meliá is setting a new benchmark for environmental standards
Located in Menorca, on the shores of Santo Tomas, a small, laid-back town on the island’s south coast, Ville Le Blanc Gran Meliá coolly illustrates that luxury and sustainability are far from incompatible with a sleek, minimalist design that takes its cues from the island’s traditional white stone houses.
A flagship for Spain’s Meliá Hotel Group – which was named most sustainable hotel company in the world by S&P Global in 2022 – Ville Le Blanc Gran Meliá became the first carbon neutral hotel with net-zero emissions within the Balearics and Melia’s first hotel of its kind when it opened its doors last July.
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Using biomass heating for its boilers, solar panels for energy production and deploying geothermal energy to air condition the building, sustainable touches abound throughout this 159-room Menorcan marvel, from the local white stone, marble and wood utilised throughout the build to the canned water I enjoy while lounging by the pool, which is surrounded by gardens of native olive, cypress, lemon and pomegranate trees.
The property is billed as Menorca’s first ‘grand luxury hotel’ and was designed by Spanish architect Álvaro Sans. “The hotel features plenty of traditional Menorcan arches to let in light and ventilation, while the building materials repel rain and absorb heat from the sun,” says the hotel’s Julia Uranga as she takes me on a tour on a hot June day that’s cooled down by a welcoming ocean breeze. Collectively, these actions reduce emissions by 87 per cent, helping to earn the hotel an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of ‘A’, the maximum.
As an avid air-con hater, I’m delighted to see that my Ocean Suite Sea View with Terrace Tub is cooled by a wooden ceiling fan, and while the temperatures hover near the 30-degree mark during my stay, the whirring blades still manage to keep the room pleasantly cool. The compostable Lavazza Eco Caps and Alma teas, which are packaged in biodegradable pyramids, also nod to the hotel’s eco-conscious credentials (though I’m not sure the suite’s two tubs encourage me to consider my water consumption).
Why was Menorca chosen as a pilot hotel for this ambitious initiative? Meliá’s vice president for sustainability, Lourdes Ripoll, says: “We’ve been working in Menorca for several decades and it’s a very popular destination for us that we feel very close to because of our Balearic and Mediterranean origins. Furthermore, it’s the perfect setting to carry out this project, as the island has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO and has a high environmental value, while at the same time it is very vulnerable to the lack of natural resources and requires innovative initiatives related to sustainability, especially in tourism, the main industry of the island.”
Thanks to the considerable variety of habitats that it comprises – ravines, caves, wetlands, isles, dune systems – Menorca was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1993, and the coastal wetland of the S’Albufera des Grau Nature Park forms the core of the sanctuary, where you can spot Eurasian coots, wood sandpipers and Sardinian warblers among other species. Meanwhile, trekking on the Camí de Cavalls, an ancient 186km-long path that encircles the island of Menorca, reveals some of the island’s loveliest beaches and coves, and the stretch from Els Alocs to Algaiarens takes in freshwater springs and a well-preserved holm oak forest.
Travellers can expect similarly sustainable properties from the Spanish hotel group, which has made considerable inroads into Thailand and Vietnam over the past few years. “With Villa Le Blanc we’ve established a net zero hotel prototype that will certainly be a reference to be followed in future construction or refurbishment projects of our hotels,” says Ripoll.
“To date, we’ve incorporated sustainable construction criteria in all our projects, such as the use of efficient technology and measures to reduce our consumption, circularity plans and so on. Our objective is to continue to make progress in the decarbonisation of our activities and reduce our global carbon footprint by 70 per cent by 2035.”
