Earlier this year in April, as reported here on Green Lodging News, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) launched its Hotel Sustainability Basics. “Developed by the industry for the industry, it highlights 12 actions which are fundamental to hotel sustainability and will help raise the base level of sustainability across the entire hospitality industry by providing every hotel a starting point on their sustainability journey,” the WTTC announcement said. Of the 12 criteria, hotels need to comply with eight initially, while the others can be committed to and put in place within three years.
Reuters just reported that more than 50,000 hotels have already signed up for the Hotel Sustainability Basics. If your hotel has not yet even done the basic things to reduce its environmental impact, you should take a look at the WTTC program.
In summary, the 12 actions are grouped into three areas: Efficiency, Planet and People. Under Efficiency, you would need to prioritize two of four actions—for example measure and reduce energy use or water use. Under Planet, four actions are required, three of which include linen reuse program, green cleaning products, and vegetarian options. Under People, two actions are required: community benefit and reduce inequalities.
A toolkit is available to help get you started. You can sign up for it on this page. Once you have taken the eight steps needed to get started, you can benchmark your property against hotels across the world and get a free benchmarking report. The Green Lodging Trends Report (GLTR) is the leading global benchmarking study on sustainability best practices in hotels. By participating in the study, hotels will be able to share their alignment to The Basics and to sustainability best practices more broadly. Each hotel that successfully completes the GLTR study can expect to receive a bespoke benchmarking report for their hotel.
This fall/winter, WTTC will launch the verification scheme for individual hotel properties that adopt the Hotel Sustainability Basics Initiative.
It is great to see this program get off to such a strong start. The small actions of many will have significant impact.
