COPENHAGEN, DENMARK—BeCause, the Danish start-up transforming how the global hospitality, travel, and tourism industries manage their sustainability data, is gearing up to offer a new digital tool that helps global hotel chains meet their reporting and compliance obligations under the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Starting in the second half of 2024, hotels utilizing BeCause’s enterprise solution will gain access to a digitized version of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), the first-ever mandatory and standardized sustainability framework for companies in Europe. With this solution, hotels can efficiently collect and create audit-ready reports on their sustainability data.
Current BeCause users will also be able to apply any existing data collected previously through the BeCause platform and automatically map it to ESRS. Similarly, any data collected for ESRS can then be reused for other purposes such as voluntary eco-certifications, eliminating costly, time-intensive, and redundant processes and multiple input of the same data, allowing hotels to re-direct their resources elsewhere.
“Instead of starting from scratch, hotels will be able to leverage the sustainability data they already have at hand and upcycle it to the ESRS framework for CSRD compliance purposes. This ability to reuse data is a hallmark of BeCause for a reason—not only does it significantly reduce workload and conserve resources, but it encourages transparency and eliminates double-accounting errors,” explains BeCause co-founder and CEO Frederik Steensgaard. “By adding the ESRS framework to our platform, we are helping hotels minimize the risk of non-compliance penalties as well as reputational damage.”
Simplifying Double Materiality for Hotels
Following the release of the ESRS framework on its platform, BeCause will also launch a new feature to help hotels address the complex issue of double materiality. This issue asks organizations to report on climate’s direct and indirect effects on their business and how their activities affect the environment. The feature will consist of a digitized framework based on the guidelines released by the European Corporate Reporting Lab (EFRAG), enabling hotels to efficiently determine the material matters and information to be reported on.
With 1,100 data points under ESRS, creating this kind of list would typically require large hotels to work with an outside consultant, a process that would usually take months and require costly upfront investment. Once BeCause implements double materiality into its platform—the only one of its kind built exclusively for the hotel and tourism industries—hotels can easily see which of the data points are pertinent to their business and independently determine the material information on sustainability impacts, risks, and opportunities in just a few days.
Modernizing Sustainability Data Management
The BeCause platform is a modern approach to managing hotel sustainability. Instead of manually collecting and transmitting data about a property’s environmental impact, BeCause is a centralized hub through which all information seamlessly flows. For instance, hotels seeking GreenKey certification can upload all their data into BeCause and overlay that data against the certification’s framework already in the platform.
Any updates to that framework are made automatically so hotels can be instantly alerted when their status is threatened due to missing data.
Travel booking websites like Booking.com also use the BeCause platform to ascertain which sustainable certificates a hotel has earned and automatically sync those with their database, enabling them to present up-to-date information to the consumer—an increasingly important factor in travelers’ purchasing decisions. According to the online travel agency’s 2023 Sustainable Travel Report, 76 percent of travelers want to travel more sustainably in the near future, while 43 percent say they would be willing to pay extra for travel options with a sustainable certification, representing a potentially lucrative source of room revenue for hotels that can meet these expectations.
“With hotels now obligated to report on their sustainability, there is a clear opportunity for them to also capitalize on the consumer demand for more sustainable accommodations by using BeCause to manage their sustainability data holistically,” Steensgaard says. “Once on the platform, the data can be used, analyzed, and distributed in many ways. This not only gives hospitality leaders the ability to pursue more climate-friendly projects but also get more value for their efforts. That’s a journey we’re proud to be part of.”
For more information about BeCause and the digitized ESRS framework or to speak with CEO and Co-founder Frederik Steensgaard, contact Vanessa Horwell at vhorwell@thinkinkpr.com.
