The Courtyard Charleston/Summerville in South Carolina, US is to be the first hotel built using Marriott International's 'green' hotel prototype.

The development, in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), will dramatically accelerate the company's goal to have 300 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) hotels by 2015. Marriott's prototype is the first in the hospitality industry to have been pre-approved by USGBC as part of its LEED Volume programme, meaning that any Marriott hotel that follows the plan will earn at least basic LEED certification upon USGBC final approval. The new Courtyard hotel will open in early 2012 as a part of a joint venture between Blanchard & Calhoun Commercial of Augusta, Georgia, and MeadWestvaco of Summerville, South Carolina. The hotel will introduce the first phase of The Parks of Berkley, a community consisting of 5,000 acres and one of the largest planned developments in the south eastern United States.

Last autumn, Marriott announced plans to develop a green hotel prototype for its Courtyard brand that will reportedly save around US$100,000, six months in design time, and up to 25 percent energy and water savings for its owners. To develop the prototype, Marriott was guided by the Courtyard Pittsburgh Settlers Ridge in Pennsylvania, which will open in the autumn of this year and is registered for LEED certification. Based on the results of the Courtyard brand, Marriott has plans to create similar green hotel prototypes for Residence Inn by Marriott, TownePlace Suites by Marriott, SpringHill Suites by Marriott and Fairfield Inn by Marriott. The company currently has nearly 50 hotels across all its brands that are LEED-certified or registered by the USGBC.

USGBC's LEED rating system is an internationally recognised green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across elements such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction and improved indoor environmental quality.