Solar safari wins socially responsible award

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - A solar-powered safari camp in Kenya and an environmentally conscious Amazon resort were awarded annual travel prizes on Monday for giving back to their communities while also providing luxurious lodgings.

The resorts were among 38 recognised by magazine Conde Nast Traveler for doing good, while at the same time doing well themselves, with its second annual World Savers Awards.

The awards were set up to recognise resorts making efforts to preserve the environment, alleviate poverty, further education, conserve wildlife and improve health.

Campi ya Kanzi, a Kenyan safari camp powered by solar energy and primarily staffed by members of the local Maasai tribe, (www.maasai.com), came out tops for alleviating poverty.

The camp, located in an area between Amboseli and Tsavo National Parks, boasts tracking game on foot with the Maasai and a luxury tented experience for about $500 a night.

Cristalino Jungle Lodge in Brazil's Amazon shared the winning honors with Vail Resorts of Colorado in the category of preserving the environment.

"The product that we sell is the outdoors. People come to us to be outdoors," said Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz.

"So it is important for us to be stewards of the environment, not only because it's the right thing to do as a company; it's the right thing to do for our planet," he said.

Vail Resorts offset all of its electricity usage, 152,000 megawatts hours, by supporting the development of wind farms.

In the health category, the winner was Journeys Within, located in Cambodia.

The tour operator's non-profit arm has added more than 180 wells to the landscape around Siem Reap, helping nearly 4,000 Cambodians escape water-related disease, the magazine said.

The Montage Laguna Beach hotel in California's Orange County won in the education category for its outreach efforts to support marine and language education in the local school district.

In the animal preservation category, the award went to Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa for its wildlife programs.

Phinda has added more than 2,000 animals - white rhinos, elephants, cheetahs, lions, giraffes - to its 57,000-acre reserve.