New Tool Measures Hotels’ Green Practices

By Marlane Bundock

Earlier this year, during the National Business Travel Association convention in Houston, a new website was launched that allows meeting planners to find out if a hotel meets a standard set of green practices. Green Hotels Global, found online at www.greenhotelsglobal.com, also helps to simplify your environmental RFP (request for proposal) efforts.

“Corporate travel departments rely on metrics to evaluate performance in all categories of their supply chain,” said Justin Raymond, president/CEO of The Carbon Accounting Company, creator of Green Hotels Global, explaining that now planners have a tool to assist with evaluating suppliers’ green metrics. “Green Hotels Global room-night carbon footprint, meeting and event carbon footprint, and water and waste diversion metrics are calculated for all hotels that register in the system. These metrics enable hotels to meet the needs of a growing number of corporations around the world.”

At present, a multitude of non-standardized environmental credentials have created a confused marketplace for hotel management, site selection teams, corporate travel buyers and procurement professionals, according to Raymond, who stated that Green Hotels Global provides tracking of ongoing environmental progress in a standardized format, thereby establishing consistency, transparency and reportable metrics.

To date, more than 40 major corporations have begun to request that their hotel suppliers enroll in the Green Hotels Global program. “I heard from one of our clients at NBTA that they will be requiring all the hotels in their preferred corporate program to participate in the Green Hotels Global measurement and disclosure program,” said Frank Schnur of American Express Business Travel. “Green Hotel Global’s approach is to measure all hotels using the same metrics and to publish key metrics that travel managers can compare side-by-side and apples-to-apples.”

Each hotel property receives an online portal to enter monthly data from utility and fuel bills, water usage, waste disposal, air conditioning fugitive gases, employee travel and commute, and supplier purchases. Using international environmental protocols, the online tool then automatically calculates that hotel’s current environmental metrics on a per-room-night and square foot basis, and provides that data free of charge to travel and meeting industry professionals.

The metrics are normalized for geographical differences so those hotels located in regions with higher energy demands are not penalized. “The submitted data are monitored for accuracy and completeness,” said Ian Lipton, chief operating officer of The Carbon Accounting Company. “In addition, we engage a third-party for spot on-the-ground audits.”

The Carbon Accounting Company also provides GreenRideGlobal.com for travel management companies to review the green practices of chauffeured ground transportation companies worldwide.