GERMANY: Corporate lodging platform HRS has released its State of Sustainability in Corporate Travel report today, with Fabio Fornari product manager for sustainability HRS talking exclusively about the results to Sustainable Hotel News.
The report looked at data collected from HRS’s Green Stay Initiative database, and found that in the face of increasing scrutiny and legislation around emissions data, the corporate travel world is stepping up processes to address the impact of hotel emissions when it comes to scope 3 reporting.
The bulk of the research for the report was done over the summer (July and August) taking Q1 and Q2 2024 into consideration and contrasting those figures from the same period one year ago. The report also includes several year-over-year metrics contrasting 2022 vs 2023.
HRS’s Green Stay Initiative (GSI) database, has sustainability-related data from hundreds of thousands of hotels worldwide, regardless of participation in GSI, that are procured and booked by corporations who work with HRS.
The corporate accommodation and technology platform works with 35 per cent of the Fortune 500 on some element of their transient, meeting and/or long stay managed lodging programme.
Fabio Fornari product manager for Sustainability HRS explained why GSI was launched in 2021: “Back in 2020, even during the pandemic, a lot of our customers started to request transparency on sustainability. And top of that was certifications from hotels, but it’s really hard to compare those certifications and see which ones are accredited by the GSTC, for example.
“Everything starts with procurement and setting up a strategy for procurement and negotiating with hotels and then when you put sustainability in that context, just having a tick box on whether a hotel has a certification or not is not enough.”
In an effort to offer its clients a standardised way to compare emissions, and how they are reported, HRS’s GSI used the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) – and digitised the reporting process, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and work by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTT), which also has the well known Hotel Sustainability Basics programme.
Free to suppliers, GSI has three different levels: Basic, which is aligned with WTTC’s Hotel Sustainability Basics, Advanced and Professional.
Basic requires self-assessment on 11 qualitative indicators, while Advanced, which is also a self assessment, requires the hotel to complete the footprint assessment on 25 qualitative indicators.
The Professional level consists of an assessment with 80 qualitative criteria, plus the footprint assessment on carbon, water and waste. Hotels need to validate the figures they report by providing a certification and proof of a third-party audit.
Fornari explains: “On the Basic and Advanced level certifications are not mandatory. Hotels can upload certifications they would like to make visible to customers…but here HRS takes an agonistic approach. On the Professional level, we require certifications accredited by the GSTC.”
At the moment around 85 per cent of GSI hotels are at Basic and Advanced level. “Professional is increasing but we are starting the process of facilitating the matching of certifications and auditing process, because now we have joined the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and we can see which hotels have third party certifications. We expect to expand the amount of hotels in Professional level moving forward.”
Sustainable Hotel News asked Fornari what HRS’s GSI will do with regards to which sustainable certifications hotels have chosen, since the news that Travalyst now has its own criteria on which certifications make the cut.
“We are monitoring [Travalyst’s] efforts to see if it makes sense to also validate hotel certifications against their list. This is why HRS joined the GSTC and will start engaging more in this type of discussion moving forward,” said Fornari.
The State of Sustainability in Corporate Travel report comes at an interesting time for the business travel sector. Most of the focus for business travel emissions has been traditionally on the airline industry but Scope 3 emissions are responsible for up to 80 per cent of a corporate carbon footprint, with hotels accounting for 30 per cent of the emissions of an average business trip.
Add to that the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) says business travel spend is increasing with figures 6 per cent higher than 2019 by the end of this year and 13 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2025.
Of course with CSRD in play since January this year, and the Green Claims Directive on our doorstep, being transparent about measuring and reporting emissions has become a lot more serious than a few years ago. We talked about what the collection and reporting of data means to the sector in our webinar The Sustainable Hotel Exchange: Data Matters. You can listen to that here.
With this in mind and travel and tourism contributing to 8 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, with business travellers accounting for 20 per cent of that, buyers and bookers will be spending a little longer on the sustainable aspects of their programmes.
This is reflected in the recent 2023 GBTA report, where 76 per cent of travel buyers were found to be integrating or planning to integrate sustainability questions into their RFPs, and 63 per cent are selecting or planning to select suppliers based on sustainability criteria.
GSI, which has the support of the majority of the top 20 global chains and more than 600 chains and groups worldwide across more than 175 countries, has a broad sense of the sector.
The report found that for GSI hotels the actual carbon footprint in the first half of 2024 is lower than in the same period of 2023 because of “the implementation of sustainability strategies from procurement to booking, which increased the use of more sustainable properties.”
According to the State of Sustainability in Corporate Travel report, based on projections drawn from bookings made in the first six months of 2024, HRS clients will reserve an additional 2.5 million room nights on top of 2023 totals at GSI-rated hotels worldwide.
This shows that sustainability is becoming a key element for hotels to attract more business.
We asked HRS what percentage of client spend was at GSI hotels, and while the response was that it does not share this information publicly, Fornari said: “What we can share is that out of all HRS bookings globally in 2023, 45 per cent were at hotels that participate in Green Stay. That is up 15 per cent from 2022, when the figure was 38 per cent.”
And while bookers and buyers might prioritise cost above sustainability, one of the most surprising finds in the HRS State of Sustainability in Corporate Travel report was that: “Contrary to the common sense that sustainability comes with a premium, the Green Stay database shows that, on average, the 25 per cent most efficient hotels within Green Stay have offered ADRs 17 per cent cheaper than the 25 per cent most polluting hotels.”
This correlation between the decarbonisation of hotels and their capacity to offer better prices is something Fornari says makes sense: “This is something we highlight in our data – the question is often ‘would you be willing to pay more for sustainability?’ but what we have seen in our data is that question might not make sense because if the hotels are reducing their energy consumption, or optimising their operations and reducing emissions, they can actually offer better prices. We are seeing correlations between hotels in carbon D efficiency class offer ADRs much higher than those in the most efficient class A.”
HRS’s report says GSI hotels succeeded at winning 22 per cent more RFP’s than non Green Stay Initiative hotels for 2024 programmes and this year they are projected to see a further 17 per cent increase in room nights booked.
RFP results from 2024 show that GSI customers reduced their carbon emissions by 12.24 per cent on average (baseline after first year of measuring) while achieving 9 per cent of savings and increasing travellers’ satisfaction and safety.
The State of Sustainability in Corporate Travel report also saw an increase in sustainable hotel bookings with 35 per cent more room nights in Green Stay hotels in 2024 vs 2023. In fact, 53 per cent of all room nights are in Green Stay hotels in 2024.
But the research also found that 36 per cent of buyers say they do not know what methodology their company is using to calculate and report carbon emissions. This is important to know because taking averages to calculate emissions won’t be good enough. CSRD will require all figures to be backed up and aligned with science-based targets, which is why Fornari was so keen to talk about GSI’s new ISO 14067 certification.
“The ISO is one of our proudest achievements this year,” he said. “They looked at how we are collecting the data, processing the data and producing the footprint metrics – specifically the carbon footprint. They are looking at what types of GHG you are considering in the calculation, which makes GSI the only solution to have it [the ISO 14067 certification] at the moment.”
HRS looks at primary data at property level, while Fornari says other solutions use averages and verify the process to generate the calculations. “They wont be able to use averages with CSRD,” he said.
HRS says at the moment GSI is the only solution to have achieved certifications following the ISO 14067 and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standards.
GSI’s booking platform allows the user to filter hotels based on price, location, security, and sustainability, adjusting the results according to which one is the main priority. After all, a trip to Angola may have different priorities, such as location or security, to a business trip to Paris.
Clients such as Deutsche Telekom and Siemens can set the platform to adjust within their travel policy, and show the best results within their sustainability policy too. There are behind-the-scenes ‘nudges’ too, which will help change traveller behaviour towards more sustainable options and travel managers receive regular updates on the carbon emissions of their lodging programmes.
As of August, HRS is also newly active in the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, which establishes and manages global standards for sustainable travel and tourism.
“We’re confident that with our laser focus on corporate lodging and meetings, technology enablement and unique Green Stay database, HRS will be an active participant within the GSTC community moving forward,” Fornari added.
The findings from the 35-page report will be discussed in the HRS Knowledge Hub, as well as in a webinar next Wednesday 11th September. You can register here.
The full report can be accessed here.
Images: HRS Green Stay Database – September 2024