A Regenerative Hotel
At Lush, we hold the Maya cosmovision not as a theme, but as a living foundation for how we operate. We're committed to the preservation and sharing of K'iche', Tz'utujil, and Kaqchikel culture through concrete, ongoing practice: creating dignified work opportunities for local indigenous families, welcoming ceremonial participation as part of our rhythm rather than a performance for guests, and hosting intentional gatherings that honor the wisdom of this land and its people. Our food and hosting concept is woven with Mayan values — reciprocity, gratitude, and connection to the cycles of the earth and lake — so that every stay becomes an invitation into a way of being, not just a place to sleep.
Maya Culture Driven & Inspired
Living the Ancestral Future
Sustainability isn't a checkbox — it's engineered into the bones of the property. Our operation runs fully on solar, producing 1.5 megawatts while consuming just 800 kilowatts, with the surplus flowing back into our immediate neighborhood rather than sitting unused. We monitor every watt through a smart system that bridges ancestral wisdom with forward-looking technology, a fitting reflection of how we move through the world: rooted in the cycles and reciprocity of Mayan cosmovision, while embracing the tools of the future to make that reciprocity real. It's abundance in practice — energy given back to the community that surrounds and sustains us.
Circular Water Managment System
At Lush, water is treated as the sacred, finite resource it truly is — from source to return. The mountain water we receive from the municipality passes through a full central filtration system before reaching every faucet in the hotel, ensuring purity at every point of use. On the other end, our wastewater is handled with equal care: a 7,000-liter biodigester system separates solids from liquids, then our bioreactor transforms our waste into bio_gas for the kitchen and bio_fertilizer that nourish our gardens, while liquids pass through natural volcanic rock filtration wells before returning gently to the earth. This closed-loop system isn't just about protecting our own water — it's a commitment to keeping Lake Atitlán itself free of waste, honoring the interconnected cycle between what we consume and what we give back.
Local & International Integration
Our commitment to community goes beyond hospitality — it's an economic and cultural investment in the people around us. We employ 40 people year-round, all earning above minimum wage with full benefits and social security, and we offer micro-lending to help our team pursue their own dreams and aspirations beyond the workplace.
That same spirit of exchange extends outward to the international community through our art and culture platform, where artists and wisdom keepers from around the world come to share their craft, turning Lush into a stage where global talent, spirituality and local warmth meet — creating some of the best symbiotic moments in town for guests and neighbors alike.
Innovation with Real Impact.
A regenerative hotel goes beyond the now-familiar promise of sustainability, which typically means minimizing harm — using less water, reducing waste, cutting emissions.
Regenerative hospitality starts from a different premise: that the hotel's presence should actively improve the ecological and social systems it's part of, leaving the land, water, and community better off than they were before the hotel existed. At lush we are restoring native vegetation and soil health on and around our premises, we using building materials and energy systems that give back more than they take and we have designed our water and waste cycles to feed back into the local ecosystem without depleting it.
Our guiding question shifts from "how do we do less damage?" to "how do we leave this place healthier because we were here?"
We invest in the surrounding community — we source labor, food, and materials locally, exchanging knowledge with the indigenous community, learning from the ancestral wisdom and also bringing innovation into the field, living with land stewardship practices, and creating economic value that circulates back into the region.
Our guests aren't just insulated observers; you are invited into the regenerative story itself, through experiences that connect you to local culture, ecology, and traditions in ways that build genuine reciprocity. For a lakeside and ecologically sensitive destination, this matters even more, since the health of the surrounding watershed, forests, and communities is inseparable from the long-term viability of our endevours.
