Green Lodging News reported earlier this week that Choice Hotels International, Inc. had released its 2024 Sustainability Report. The report covers the fiscal year of January 1, 2024, through December 31, 2024. Choice is one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world, with over 7,500 hotels representing more than 650,000 rooms in 46 countries and territories.
Choice’s sustainability strategy and initiatives, many of which align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), demonstrate its commitment to being a responsible steward for people and the planet. “We are committed to propelling the success of others and building a better tomorrow,” Choice says.
Choice is an active member of AHLA’s Sustainability Committee, a forum for knowledge sharing on sustainability topics that impact the hotel industry. Choice is an inaugural member of AHLA’s Responsible Stay initiative focused on energy efficiency, waste reduction, water conservation and responsible sourcing practices.
Choice frames its sustainability performance using People, Planet, Performance. In this news blog entry, I will highlight Choice news found in its Sustainability Report under “Planet.”
Some Highlights from 2024
- Enhanced its greenhouse gas emissions inventory to include Scope 1, 2, and 3 reporting.
- Signed a partnership agreement with the National Park Foundation to preserve nature and wildlife and connect its hotels to nearby parks. The collaboration with the National Park Foundation advances Choice’s strategy to support impactful environmental and social initiatives. The partnership is a natural and meaningful collaboration: 95 percent of its domestic hotels are within a 1.5-hour drive to a national park and 60 percent are within a 45-minute drive.
- Launched a pilot program using artificial intelligence technology to monitor and reduce food waste in kitchens at its managed hotels.
- Powered by Schneider Electric, Choice’s utilities tracking dashboard allows hotels to track their energy and water consumption and automatically calculates their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It considers hotel occupancy and helps hotel owners identify savings opportunities and anomalies, such as major leaks. As of year-end 2024, more than 50% of domestic properties had onboarded onto the dashboard. The ongoing aggregation of reliable and robust data also informs Choice’s larger sustainability strategy and goals as we continue to analyze our GHG emissions and work towards setting science-based targets validated by SBTi.
- Choice developed impactful video training modules in 2024 to help franchisees integrate Room to be Green practices at their properties. These modules include an introduction to the Room to be Green program and an onboarding video for hotels’ Green Ambassadors. As of January 1, 2025, Room to be Green Level 1 requirements are brand standards across all our domestic hotels. These requirements are also being rolled out to international direct markets, making it Choice’s first global brand standard related to sustainability.
- Its ongoing efforts to increase awareness of the impacts of climate change have helped it to establish baseline data, a critical first step to setting targets, and advance climate-related initiatives. In 2024, analysis showed more than 99 percent of Choice emissions are Scope 3 and approximately 95 percent of those emissions come from franchised hotels. This information is helping to inform its goals, including the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) targets it is in the process of developing, and its greater journey toward decarbonization.
- In early 2024, Choice became the first major hotel company to migrate its entire IT system infrastructure to the cloud. Transitioning fully to Amazon Web Services (AWS) has helped reduce the carbon footprint and energy consumption from its data storage and processing activities and allowed it to benefit from AWS sustainability initiatives including energy efficient data centers, commitment to renewable energy use, and optimization of cloud workloads for sustainability.
- Choice, in collaboration with Clean02, is the inaugural recipient of the 2024 World Sustainable Travel & Hospitality Award in the Leading Sustainable Technology category. The award recognizes the groundbreaking CarbinX technology pilot at the Radisson Blu Mall of America in Minnesota, the first hotel in the world to have implemented the technology. The small-scale carbon capture unit reduces gas consumption and GHG emissions by connecting directly to the hotel’s water boilers, sequestering a significant portion of the carbon dioxide emitted. The CO2 is then turned into potassium carbonate through a chemical reaction and can be used as an ingredient in various commercial products, such as soaps and detergents.
- Nearly 2,000 hotel properties in the U.S. have now installed LED exterior signage, reducing their signage electricity usage by 50 to 70 percent.
- More than 2,300 guestrooms in managed hotels switched to smart thermostats, reducing guest room HVAC usage by up to 52 percent and providing a payback of less than two years.
- The owner and general manager of the new MainStay Suites hotel in Chesapeake, Va., Justin Patel, installed 330 solar panels on the hotel’s rooftop, each producing 400 watts of renewable electricity. The 132-kilowatt photovoltaic system is expected to reduce the hotel’s electricity bill by 15 percent. The project benefited from federal and state solar tax credits, as well as the Small Business Administration’s 504 Green Loan Program, for an equivalent of about 30 percent of the project’s total cost.
- All domestic hotels are required to meet Room to be Green Level 1 standards, which means they must implement a set of sustainability initiatives such as installing water-saving fixtures and implementing the towel-and-linen reuse program. Advanced levels of our Room to be Green program include more ambitious water-saving criteria, such as gray water recycling and low irrigation landscaping.
- The required laundry program with Ecolab across domestic hotels helps reduce environmental impact through concentrated formulations that are biodegradable, non-toxic to aquatic life, and contain no or low phosphorus. U.S. hotels also have the option to use Ecolab’s Aquanomic 2.0 Low-Temperature Laundry Program, which can deliver up to a 40 percent savings in water and energy. In 2024, Choice properties in the U.S. that used this program saved 166 million gallons of water, 5,409 metric tons of CO2e, 1.1 million Therms of energy, and 215,290 pounds of waste.
- Choice previously set goals to phase out single-use polystyrene products across domestic brands by year-end 2023. Polystyrene products have now been eliminated from the brand standards for all applicable brands.
- Choice works with an external vendor to repurpose, donate or recycle technology equipment and materials. In 2024, corporate offices diverted more than 6,700 pounds of electronic waste from landfills.
- Choice is piloting six Winnow VisionAI systems that automatically scan, weigh and recognize food that is being discarded by kitchen staff. The systems make instant recommendations to reduce waste, such as portion-control adjustments or adapting the use of select ingredients in recipes. The technology provides scalable solutions to reduce costs and improve sustainability, and the payback is expected to be less than a year.
- In 2024, Choice established a cross-functional task force to take an inventory of single-use plastic items across all its brand segments, identifying opportunities to reduce single-use plastics in its hotel portfolio. Managed hotels no longer use plastic straws, stirrers, Styrofoam cups, bowls, plates and to-go containers. Many have also switched to using wood coffee stirrers, glass water jugs for meetings, and more. This also includes several pilots such as boxed and aluminum alternatives to plastic water bottles in the marketplace, compostable to-go food containers, cutlery and bags, and water fountains on room floors.
- Choice continues to advance toward its goal of making bulk amenities standard across domestic brands by the end of 2025. Each large bottle replaces the equivalent of 20 to 25 individual mini bottles on average, leading to approximately 85 percent less plastic and liquid waste since no partially empty bottles are thrown away by the housekeeping teams. The bulk amenities bottles and caps are made of 100 percent recyclable materials.
- Choice eliminated the plastic coating from its new standard Choice Privileges paper cups for all hotels in the U.S. These cups are made from 100 percent Forest Stewardship Council certified paper, are 100 percent plastic-free, 100 percent recyclable and 96 percent compostable, and feature a water-based inner coating with no fluorine.
- In 2024, Choice launched a new sustainability survey for its qualified vendors to evaluate vendors’ environmental and social practices. The initiative helped identify vendors in alignment with its Sustainability Policy.
- In 2024, it transitioned to using 100 percent cage-free eggs and crate-free pork at its managed hotels’ all-day dining restaurants. Today, 100 percent of suppliers who sell egg products in 11 key markets, which represents more than 90 percent of hotels globally, offer cage-free options. Globally, more than 20 percent of the hotel portfolio’s total egg spend is from cage-free eggs.
