Two sustainability organisations are forming a partnership to create “solid standards and effective tools” to verify that hospitality providers are becoming more sustainable in their operations.
The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) are coming together to “consolidate best practice” in sustainable hospitality.
“This new partnership will bring together the alliance's hospitality industry reach and measurement expertise, with the GSTC's experience in sustainability standards and assurance, to enhance the industry's understanding of sustainability criteria and the need to capture robust sustainability data,” said the two organisations in a statement.
Being able to measure sustainability in an effective and consistent way, including key factors such as carbon emissions from business trips, has become a crucial topic within the corporate travel industry.
For example, BT4Europe, the new European network of business travel associations, last year called for “standardised, accurate and comparable” data on carbon emissions from travel to enable the sector to make progress in reducing its environmental footprint.
The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance and GSTC said that “greenwashing has become a widespread issue globally”, with some companies using sustainability language without “evidence of any real impact”.
They also point out that the “current vast number of ways in which companies are required to report ESG (environmental, social and governance) data for different stakeholders and countries, is not only inefficient but can also lead to difficulties in benchmarking companies and therefore establishing best practice”.
The new partnership aims to tackle this issue by using “consistent tools and initiatives to produce globally comparable data” for the hospitality sector. It will utilise the GSTC’s criteria, accreditation programme and training, combined with the alliance’s tools and initiatives, for this process.
Glenn Mandziuk, CEO of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, said: “Now is the time to unite our expertise, embedding sustainability criteria across the industry and ensuring every hotel has the tools and guidance needed to become a more regenerative business - that gives back more than it takes.”
Randy Durband, CEO of GSTC, added that it supported developing “universal measurement tools” to assess the sustainability performance of hospitality businesses.