Worldwide Hospitality Awards

“Less carbon for better tourism” is the ambition of Village Nature Paris: an innovative destination offering a unique experience of sustainable tourism.

Just minutes from Paris and Disneyland Paris, Villages Nature Paris is a short and medium stay destination reinventing the concept of holidays, presenting a new art of living where guests can enjoy a complete change of scene in five immersive worlds inspired by the vision of harmony between man and nature while also feeling completely at home. Villages Nature Paris is a place of exploration, encounters and moments to share.

But that’s not all, Villages Nature Paris is also, at this scale, a major innovation in sustainable tourism in Europe. Every detail has been designed to minimize the site’s ecological footprint with an important focus on the reduction of carbon footprint. Indeed, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs and Euro Disney’s objective is to create a touristic destination allowing visitors to live within the resources limit of a single planet during their stay. To become on the One Planet Living destination, Villages Nature Paris has worked, since its inception in 2013, with Bioregional (charity based in the UK which aims to invent and deliver practical solutions for sustainability). Its Sustainable Action Plan is based on concrete targets for construction and operation, over the 10 One Planet Living principles. This action plan addresses the three pillars of sustainable development (environmental performance; community and local economic impact; and guests and employees health and happiness) and the progresses are evaluated every year by a public governing body, the Sustainable Development Advisory Board (CCDD in French). 

The “Zero Carbon” target is one of the major highlights of the Sustainable Action Plan. The strategy to reach this ambitious objective relies on four main levers of action: build high performance buildings, maximize the use of renewable energy, favor low carbon material for construction (for example to choose low-carbon concrete and eco-friendly wood) and ease access by low-carbon public transportation means.

100% of the energy needs for heating and hot water are covered by a geothermal system. Thanks to this local renewable resources, 9 000 tons of CO2 is saved every year (compared to the use of natural gas) reducing the energy carbon footprint of a sleepersnight by 67%.

Furthermore the localization of the resort was not randomly selected: it is a strategic destination easily reachable by European and international tourists with an objective of 30% of visitors coming by public transportation and the work today is to create positive incentive to guests to use low carbon transportation means.

Thereby, Villages Nature Paris is the first in a new generation of resort destinations, close to major metropolitan areas, easy to get by train or car, and firmly committee to a transition towards renewables energy and sustainability with the ambition of becoming a neutral carbon destination. As of its opening, Villages Nature Paris is only at the beginning of its “zero carbon” journey. Focus is now on maximizing local procurement with food partners, continue to look for green energy procurements and build up a carbon offsetting scheme. By providing tangible and innovative solutions to the major environmental challenges, Villages Nature Paris has officially joined the One Planet Community network, was selected by the United Nations Environment Program (UN Environment) to join the Global Partnership for Sustainable Tourism, and was recognized in 2017 for its sustainability commitments in the context of the Sustainable Partnership and 10YFP Sustainable Tourism Program.

Our ambitious towards the “zero carbon” objective of Villages Nature Paris is an illustration of what we believe in: sustainable development is not simply a catalogue of standards, it is an attitude, an optimistic vision of the world with a transformative power offering a unique experience in sustainable tourism.