Green is the New Gold: Harnessing Sustainability as a Business Driver for Your Hotel
The EU’s new ESG reporting regulations will force hotels to overhaul their sustainability data management. Those who adapt quickly will gain far more than just compliance.
With the European Union’s Corporate Social Responsibility Directive (CSRD)—the rule governing corporate ESG reporting— now in effect, it’s impossible to step into a sales meeting or complete an RFP without addressing how your hotel or brand plans to meet its compliance obligations. Yet, many hotels find themselves in this situation and are struggling due to a lack of reliable sustainability data.
Our estimates show that the hospitality industry spends USD 8 billion annually on sustainability reporting but has little more to show for that investment. This is because most sustainability data is still collected manually through emails, surveys and spreadsheets, demanding significant human effort and yielding unreliable conclusions. Achieving CSRD compliance is nearly impossible in such a laborious and unscalable scenario.
Sustainability: The Business Driver
Non-compliance is just one of the consequences for hotels that don’t invest in reducing their carbon footprint. According to Booking.com’s most recent Sustainable Travel Report 2024, 75% of travelers want to travel more sustainably over the coming year, and almost half find accommodations labeled as sustainable appealing.
Despite this clear demand, many hotels have shied away from obtaining necessary certifications due to cost, resulting in an estimated USD 13 billion in lost revenue. Older data collection methods are also to blame. So, how can hotels turn sustainability into a driver of demand and profitability, ensuring that green initiatives pay for themselves?
Modernizing Sustainability Data Management
No company today would even consider producing its yearly financial reports without using accounting software. Similarly, sustainability reporting requires investor-grade data to ensure accuracy and reliability.
A platform that centralizes hotel sustainability data is the key to audit-ready reports; it can also drive more sustainability-focused initiatives by providing leaders with the necessary information to make informed decisions that leverage trustworthy data, not suppositions or best guesses.
Why does the hotel industry need its own tool? An industry-agnostic platform would force hotels to sift through thousands of data points in CSDR’s underlying framework to determine which ones are most crucial to their business, consuming significant time and resources that could be better spent on operational improvements and expanding sustainability initiatives.
Eco-certifications and other industry-specific frameworks require hotels to meet specific criteria, necessitating precise data collection and reporting. With CSRD being the most pressing sustainability reporting requirement for hotels today, it’s essential to have streamlined tools to gather and report the accurate data needed for various purposes, including eco-certifications, RFP submissions, and sustainability data requirements from OTAs and other platforms. Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of this data is crucial for compliance and maintaining industry standards.
A Significant Step in the Right Direction for Hotel Sustainability
Recently, d2o made significant strides in the hotel industry by partnering with the sustainability data management platform BeCause to develop a comprehensive and automated CSRD solution for hotels. This pioneering solution integrates the PMI GoGreen suite, known for its excellence in prediction, target setting, and environmental resource allocation, with the BeCause sustainability hub. The result is an efficient platform for managing and reporting sustainability metrics. This partnership enhances compliance, operational efficiency, and profitability, offering hotels a robust ecosystem for sustainable operations and financial performance.
This partnership equips hotels with the tools they need to go beyond compliance, whether they are in the EU or other regions with less established sustainability disclosure rules.
Hotels can now utilize a centralized sustainability data management platform to set and monitor daily sustainability targets aligned with hotel demand and operational forecasts. This approach helps reduce consumption, CO2 emissions, and operating costs by 12-15%. Additionally, the platform allows sharing of this data among stakeholders within the sustainability data management hub. Through AI and machine learning capabilities, environmental data collected by PMI GoGreen and shared with BeCause can be automatically mapped to frameworks like CSRD without human intervention, maximizing operational efficiency.
Implementing robust sustainability practices that demonstrate a hotel’s transparent commitment to a cleaner planet can provide a competitive edge. By leveraging cutting-edge technology like that offered through the partnership between BeCause and d2o, hotels can embark on a new path in their sustainability journey—one that doesn’t sacrifice the bottom line but elevates it to new heights.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juan Ruano, Business & Sustainability Consultant at d2o
Juan is a seasoned hotelier with years of experience in Operations, working with top international groups like MOHG and Fairmont. He then transitioned to Hotel Revenue Management, first as a consultant, then in Hospitality Technology with industry leaders like Duetto and Beonx. Passionate about sustainable hospitality, Juan recently joined d2o to focus on PMI GoGreen, d2o´s Environmental Management System. Leveraging his expertise in hotel forecasting and technology, Juan supports hotels in reducing resource consumption while boosting profit margins.”
