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Mastering hotel sourcing: 6 sustainability metrics to consider beyond carbon

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Mastering hotel sourcing: 6 sustainability metrics to consider beyond carbon

By Jennifer Nicholas, Director, Hotel Spend Management

By Olivia Ruggles-Brise, Vice President of Sustainability, BCD Travel

Gone are the days when travel programs only focused on rates, cancellation policies, and amenities during the hotel sourcing process.

Today, the request for proposal (RFP) process is not only an opportunity to align with suppliers that drive value to your preferred program, but also to support overall global initiatives – like sustainability. Hotels are often overlooked when it comes to sustainability in business travel, with the focus centered around the impact of air emissions. However, hotels can play a big part in a sustainable business travel program and their impact should be a consideration during the RFP process.

Including sustainability in the RFP process

When evaluating hotels from a sustainability perspective, emissions are the most important consideration. Measuring and reducing emissions per traveler, per room night should be a core component of your sustainability strategy. However, it’s also crucial to account for other environmental and social impacts of your hotel program. During the RFP process, consider asking hotels about their initiatives around:

  • Energy consumption: Hotels consume significant amounts of energy, with heating and cooling being one of the main contributors. Consider asking: What is the share of electricity in your total energy consumption?
  • Renewable energy: Investing in renewable energy is one of the most impactful changes a hotel can make to reduce their environmental impact. Consider asking: Does the hotel generate or purchase renewable energy? What percentage of their energy comes from renewable sources?
  • Water consumption: Research shows that guests consume significantly more water when they are staying at a hotel than at home. In fact, water usage at a typical hotel is 500L per room per day on average, which is four times what an average European uses per day. Consider asking: Does the hotel have initiatives in place to reduce daily guest room cleaning and sheets/towel change? Does the hotel use low-flow and flush guest-facing water fixtures?
  • Waste management: While many chains are transitioning to bulk amenities in their bathrooms and are reducing the use of plastic straws and plastic bottles, single-use plastics remain common. Food waste from amenities like breakfast buffets also contribute greatly to a hotel’s environmental impact. Consider asking: Does the hotel have a food waste reduction program? Are they recycling? What initiatives have they taken to reduce single-use plastics?
  • Biodiversity: While hotels strive to provide comfort, their operations inadvertently impact biodiversity through habitat destruction, chemical pollution from cleaning products, and excessive water consumption. Some hotels have programs in place to reduce their impact on biodiversity. Consider asking: Does the hotel use eco-certified cleaning products? Does the hotel serve organic food? How are they involved in their local community?
  • Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I): Consider asking: Does the hotel have a strong program around DE&I when it comes to hiring? Has the hotel publicly shared their diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments and /or initiatives and relevant progress?

For companies just getting started on their sustainability journey, the GBTA (CR) module can be a great resource to access a database of basic questions to evaluate suppliers’ sustainability efforts. For those that are more advanced in their journey, custom questions become a critical part of the RFP evaluation process. When integrating custom questions into your RFP, it’s best to develop a strategic weighting system that correlates to your company’s overall objectives. Such a system then allows for a data-driven approach to including or excluding hotels from your global preferred program.

It is crucial that suppliers answer all questions – and answer them accurately. We often see that suppliers don’t give enough weight or merit to these additional questions.

Sourcing the best hotels

Think about eco-certified properties and look for reliable eco-certifications when adding hotels to your hotel program. Greenkey, Nordic Swan, and European Ecolabel are some of the most common. For instance, Greenkey addresses a wide range of issues beyond CO2 that you might not have considered, including biodiversity, waste management, employee training, DE&I, and respect for local culture. This gives travel managers full peace of mind that these hotels are serious from an environmental and sustainability perspective.

Taking action beyond the RFP

Once hotels have been selected into the program, it’s important to communicate and guide travelers to make the right decisions to reduce their environmental impact. We all have a personal responsibility when it comes to sustainability, and we can all play our part. It’s important to leverage traveler engagement strategies to educate travelers on preferred suppliers and ways to make their stay more sustainable like:

  • Reusing towels and bed sheets which can save significant amounts of energy and water.
  • Only using lighting when they need it, as lighting accounts for 15% of a hotel energy consumption.
  • Thinking about the temperature of the room. If heating is decreased by 1 degree, 7% of energy is saved.
  • Considering when public transport is available from the airport.

There are a lot of factors to consider when incorporating sustainability into your hotel program. Advito has the solutions to help you, whether you are just getting started with adding sustainability questions to your 2025 RFP, or already developing a more robust sustainability and traveler engagement strategy.

Many hotels have taken significant steps to take sustainability seriously and it’s time to get business travel programs to follow suit. Travelers are also becoming more eco-conscious and are often eager to participate actively in their company’s attempts to reduce its environmental impact. This trend is sure to last, and it’s a great time for travel managers to take the lead in promoting sustainable initiatives. Contact us today to get started!

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