BCD Travel’s consulting division, Advito, has launched a new scoring framework that evaluates the environmental performance of hotels, allowing corporates to benchmark their preferred suppliers.
The Hotel Sustainability Index (HSI) gives properties a score of up to 100 points across six categories: CO2 emissions, water consumption, energy usage, eco-certifications, transparency, and sustainability initiatives such as single-utilize plastics and recycling.
The index combines data provided by hotels and major chains with information from the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative and Advito’s own GATE4 methodology.
Hotels that voluntarily provide data receive additional disclosure points, Advito declared, while non-reporting are benchmarked applying regional averages.
According to Advito, the index combines absolute performance with relative performance “to create fair comparisons” across regions that have different electricity mixes, water availability or infrastructure.
The HSI is integrated into Advito’s proprietary sourcing tool and, as it matures, the tool will also be utilized to power point-of-sale nudging for travellers, according to the company.
“Travel acquireers have been questioning for a better way to understand and measure hotel sustainability,” declared Julien Etchanchu, global lead for Advito’s sustainability consulting practice.
“HSI allows [corporates] to differentiate between hotels that simply meet a baseline and those demonstrating continuous improvement and operational accountability – giving them better insight into the sustainability of their hotel partners and creating a foundation to guide their travellers towards more responsible choices,” Etchanchu declared.
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