Name: Maxime Verstraete
Title: Vice President, Sustainability & ADA Compliance
Company: Hilton Worldwide
Years in current position: Two years
Primary responsibilities: “Ensuring that all 4,400+ hotels meet the highest sustainability standards in the industry. Making sure our global sustainability strategy becomes a reality at the local level.”
Organization’s most significant sustainability-related accomplishment: “Launching LightStay, Travel with Purpose and our triple ISO certifications.”
Organization’s most significant sustainability-related challenge moving forward: “The challenges I see are the varying global legislations. We are in 97 countries. The other is supply chain which we have been focusing on.”
MCLEAN, VA.—As Vice President, Sustainability & ADA Compliance for Hilton Worldwide, Maxime Verstraete is responsible for ensuring the company’s more than 4,400 properties meet the highest standards in the industry. He oversees key initiatives to help reduce carbon and waste, limit water and energy usage and ensure sustainable sourcing practices. Based in Hilton Worldwide’s headquarters in McLean, Va., Verstraete is part of a nine-person corporate responsibility team that overseas sustainability efforts around the globe.
With Hilton almost 11 years, Verstraete says he has been involved in sustainability in one shape or form since 2005. Today, he oversees LightStay, Hilton’s proprietary system developed to calculate and analyze environmental impact. Hilton officially launched LightStay in 2010 after two years of testing. “It is a brand standard globally,” Verstraete says. “We use it to measure our entire CSR performance. We use it to share best practices, to set smart goals, and to measure our impact.”
As part of LightStay, each Hilton property has to set one energy, water and waste diversion goal for the year. “They have to have a project in place in each of the three areas as a brand standard,” Verstraete says. “We will continue to have that annual requirement.”
Last year, Hilton upgraded LightStay to better enable hotels to monitor their community and societal impact. For example, hotels can track donations to organizations such as Clean the World and Good 360.
New Long-Term Goals Coming Soon
In 2009 Hilton set a five-year goal to reduce energy by 20 percent by the end of 2013. It fell short of its goal but still had a 13.6 percent reduction. In the area of waste reduction, Hilton exceeded its goal in 2011—two years early—experiencing a 26.8 percent reduction (baseline year 2009). In 2012, a full year early, Hilton surpassed its five-year water reduction goal of 10 percent, ending up with a 13.1 percent reduction (again, 2009 baseline year). Verstraete says Hilton is currently working on defining new long-term goals and will be releasing those soon.
Last year, Hilton achieved ISO 50001 certification for energy management for its global portfolio through a major upgrade to LightStay, which complements other global system-wide ISO certifications of ISO 9001 and 14001. Part of Verstraete’s duties is to oversee the ISO certifications.
Verstraete says Hilton is at the point where “everyone has done the low-hanging fruit.” One of the company’s current areas of focus is the supply chain to see where there might be areas of risk. “We are about to finish a risk mapping exercise,” Verstraete says. Hilton has been recognized by a number of organizations for its progress in procuring sustainable seafood. In December 2012, Hilton first removed shark fin from menus across all restaurants and food and beverage facilities operated by its managed properties in China and Southeast Asia, only serving it on request. This action helped pave the way for a global company ban on shark fin effective April 1, 2014.
When asked what he most likes about his role with Hilton, Verstraete said, “The fact that this job allows me to partner with all of the different functions of the company. We really work with all of the different teams to bring sustainability to life. I really enjoy that.”
Prior to joining Hilton in 2005, Maxime worked in hotel operations at various properties in the United States, France and Mexico including The Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, Calif. and the Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme. He has a Master’s degree in Information Technology from the Ecole Française d’Electronique et d’Informatique (EFREI) in Paris.
Go to Hilton Worldwide.
Glenn Hasek can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.
