Piles of waste in a luxury hotel: Hugo Clément highlights the excesses of mass tourism

Luxury lodges and a beautiful swimming pool in the shade of coconut trees, all just a stone's throw from the beach. For guests of this five-star hotel on the Indonesian island of Gili Trawangan, the idyllic setting promises an unforgettable stay. But behind this postcard setting, piles of rubbish pile up in the open air close to the rooms and even attract animals in search of food. This is revealed by a video shared this Sunday by journalist Hugo Clément, viewed nearly 2.5 million times in less than 24 hours.

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This is the hidden face of mass tourism, which we do not see on Instaor TikTok, "comments Hugo Clément in his two-minute video made on the sidelines of the shooting of the next show of On the front of France 5. Food packaging, household waste, construction site rubble... "It's all that the hotel deposits directly into nature," he describes as he discovers the wild dump at the corner of a service door. If the journalist does not name the establishment, a clue makes it possible to identify it: a slipper with the name of Jambuluwuk inscribed, a five-star hotel that offers overnight stays from 70 € per night.

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Classified as "Sustainable Travel" on Booking

The images are all the more challenging as "the hotel highlights its eco-responsible side on its website and praises its waste management," continues Hugo Clément. In the comments, however, many netizens point out that this problem is global in Indonesia due to the glaring lack of infrastructure dedicated to waste collection.

On Booking, the Jambuluwuk Oceano Gili Trawangan even displays a level 3 in the category "Sustainable Travel", the highest degree of distinction. "We must be wary of these badges that rely only on the declarative. Large platforms such as Booking do not carry out any verification and do not include eco-responsibility criteria in their rating grid," warns Guillaume Jouffre, co-founder of GreenGo. On this French and eco-responsible alternative to Airbnb, accommodations are evaluated on a grid of 113 environmental criteria before being selected.

Former guests are best able to describe the reality of their stay and denounce bad practices.

Guillaume Jouffre, co-founder of GreenGo

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Booking also acknowledges that it awards the "Sustainable Travel" badge on the simple good faith of the hosts. "This establishment told us to act and invest in a very important way for more sustainability, by implementing practices that can have a positive impact on an environmental and social level," reads the platform.

So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? First of all, refer to labels such as the European Ecolabel, the Green Key or the Ecogîte, often awarded by external bodies. "Nevertheless, these labels have limits because they cover a small geographical area and are awarded to very few establishments," warns Guillaume Jouffre. Another solution is to read online reviews on different platforms: "The community is the most powerful lever and Hugo Clément's video shows the impact it can have. Guests who have stayed in a hotel are in the best position to describe the reality of their stay and denounce bad practices."