How hotels can capture demand for sustainable stays

With an alarming number of extreme weather events dominating the headlines over the past few years and major reports sounding the warning bells about global warming, the effects of climate change have become impossible to ignore. While governments are responding with more aggressive policies to curb carbon emissions, consumers are increasingly looking to corporations to play their part and do good for people and the planet. According to the Harvard Business Review, companies that invest sufficiently in sustainability will outperform those that do not, particularly among younger consumers.  

Travel is one major industry where consumers recognize the need to be more sustainable. In Booking.com’s 2022 Sustainable Travel Report, 71% of global travelers hoped to travel more sustainably in the upcoming year, reflecting a growing commitment to eco-friendly travel choices. 

And yet there is some evidence that consumer interest in sustainable travel has plateaued at 75%, based on Booking.com’s most recent Sustainable Travel Report. While this stagnation doesn’t diminish the importance of sustainability in travel (three-quarters of the population is not insignificant!), the leveling off can be attributed to the challenges consumers face in finding and booking sustainable travel options.

Chief among these challenges is choice and trust. Though the availability of eco-accommodations is on the rise, identifying sustainable accommodations outside of this category is less obvious. How can you be sure the hotel you’ve booked for a weekend in London prioritizes sustainability and is not engaging in greenwashing activities? Furthermore, how can hotels in the same group maintain a consistent level of sustainability across different locations to ensure that guests are not disappointed from one booking to the next?

Overall, consumers tend not to trust brand sustainability claims, and that’s certainly the case in travel. 

According to Booking.com’s 2023 survey, nearly 40% of consumers said they don’t trust the sustainability of available travel options. About 50% think they are too expensive, likely because these options tend to cater to the luxury market. And yet, 45% of consumers in the 2024 poll say they find it appealing when they come across an accommodation with sustainability labeling, with 67% agreeing that all travel booking sites should use the same sustainable certifications or labels. 

The message to companies is clear: To meet the demand for sustainable stays and ensure the trustworthiness of their claims, hospitality brands must be ready to prove that their actions towards the environment are genuine. 

Recognized certifications from organizations like Green Key are the best way hotels can substantiate their green policies to the public. What those certifications mean must be clearly communicated via different booking partners using consistent terms. Laid out in this way, the mission seems rather straightforward, and yet anyone involved in quantifying, analyzing and communicating sustainability within the hotel space knows this is far from true. Let’s explore why. 

The path to sustainability

Establishing standardized reporting and certifications across the hospitality and travel industries is essential for scaling sustainability practices. Data is central to creating these standards, but the existing sustainability data management practices don’t allow it. Many hotels, even ones that are part of large hospitality groups, still collect and communicate their sustainability data manually — in other words, through email and spreadsheets. It’s a decentralized, time-consuming process prone to human error that results in inconsistent experiences across different properties. It’s also expensive. 

According to our estimates, hotels spend nearly $8 million annually on sustainability reporting using these complex fragmented and manual approaches without much to show. And because each eco-certification standard asks for data based on its own parameters, data can’t easily be re-used, creating a significant hurdle across the industry toward sustainability innovation and initiative expansion. 

The challenges are similar for booking partners like online travel agencies (OTAs). To communicate a hotel’s sustainability credentials to its customers, OTAs often receive an exported list of hotels via a spreadsheet from the different certifiers and then must manually (and individually) match them to hotels in their database before being able to create a category for sustainability within their booking channels. As a result, it’s near impossible for OTAs to process information in real time, fueling consumer skepticism about the validity of a travel provider’s sustainability claims and discouraging some platforms from including sustainability as a search parameter. 

In 2024, no hotel or booking partner should manually manage its sustainability data. This practice causes them to miss out on revenue from the growing eco-conscious traveler market and puts them at serious risk of not meeting sustainability reporting and compliance requirements. Governments worldwide, such as the European Union, have begun implementing these standards for all businesses operating within their borders. 

Removing obstacles to more responsible tourism

If siloed and outdated practices are the problem, combining a hotel’s sustainability data and data requirements from eco-certifiers and government regulators into a centralized, interconnected database is the modern-day answer. While sustainability data management software has existed for many years, until recently, no system has ever addressed hotels' specific needs.

But with the introduction of purpose-built sustainability data management technology, hotels and the broader travel industry now have a streamlined way to handle their sustainability data. This solution acts like a hub or intermediary, centralizing all hotel sustainability data and efficiently funneling data between all relevant parties within and outside an organization. Individual hotels, large chains, booking engines, industry organizations and eco-standards certifiers can all access the hub, pushing and pulling data to its central database via API, enabling a high-level of automation previously not possible. What does this mean in practical terms?

First off, hotels gain access to the different sustainability certification frameworks and tools from within the hub, providing them a more direct path to certification. A platform with AI capabilities, for instance, can help sustainability leads quickly evaluate the data required to successfully complete a certification and alert them to any gaps that threaten their status, while also enabling data up-cycling. This means that data is automatically mapped across different frameworks, allowing hotels to earn more certifications faster and for less money. Any changes to frameworks are uploaded directly to the sustainability data management hub in real time as well, ensuring there are no lapses in information. 

The same principle applies to government regulations like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. A sustainability data management hub built for the hotel industry should be able to incorporate the government reporting frameworks into its database, providing hotels with only the relevant datapoints they need to create audit-ready reports, significantly reducing the time and cost barriers to regulatory compliance. 

But hotels aren’t the only beneficiaries of a centralized hotel sustainability data management system. Booking platforms can also connect to eco-certifiers via the database and automatically validate a hotel’s eco-labeling in real time, eliminating the possibility of greenwashing. This means customers have a broader selection of sustainable accommodations at almost every price point and can make decisions based on trusted, verifiable information.

The demand for sustainable travel options remains strong, but consumer weariness has started to creep in. To quell that weariness, hospitality providers must double down on their efforts to build trust through accurate and consistent sustainability reporting that leverages recognized certifications to instill confidence in travelers looking to reduce the carbon footprint of their travels. 

Aside from the revenue gains, investing in a more automated, centralized and intuitive sustainability data management system will help hotels save on operational costs, meet compliance and reporting obligations despite increasing regulations and gain an undeniable competitive advantage. 

Most importantly, these actions enable more responsible tourism by providing travelers with trustworthy, sustainable choices and ensuring their travel experiences positively contribute to the environment and local communities.