The Hutton Hotel: A Green Hotel Frenzy, Southern-Style!

Currently in a soft-opening phase—the property just opened its doors last week—downtown Nashville's Hutton Hotel is one of the most eco-friendly properties in the Southeast. Unlike a lot of other ostensibly green hotels with a program where they don't change your sheets very often and that's all they do for the environment, the Hutton bristles with technology that makes it greener and more efficient for the hotel. (In other words, it saves them money so, presumably, there's oopmh behind it).

Inside, the Hutton is awash in bamboo—a highly renewable wood—on the floors and on the walls. The hotel even has a program in place to reduce waste from tiny plastic bottles for bathroom amenities, as well as dual-flush toilets. There's also sexier amenities like media hubs for your electronics, digital controls for the shower so you can set a specific temperature and television displays in the lobby that turn into mirrors when they're switched off. The hotel's worth checking out because it cleverly slots into the Nashville hotel market; less upmarket than the deluxe Hermitage, but without the swarms of conventioneers that overrun Opryland every weekend. I, for one, wouldn't mind digital shower controls of my very own, though I'd settle for real water pressure in my apartment as a close second.