The hospitality industry accounts for about 1% of carbon emissions across the globe. With rapid growth in the industry, this adverse impact will only grow without sustainable intervention. Many hotels are now looking toward a different future, one that prioritizes green initiatives. Though shifting business practices can require a large investment, sustainability can potentially be a profitable solution that offers a notable ROI. We’ll review the benefits and challenges of hotel sustainability, along with some key ways hotels can make this change.

Benefits of Introducing Sustainable Practices

There is more of an emphasis than ever on adopting greener business practices. If hotels can find new ways to lower their energy usage, their annual contribution to water pollution and fossil fuel emissions can significantly decrease. Besides energy, hotels tend to waste an incredible amount of food and natural resources.

Hotels contribute to the nearly half a billion tons of food waste produced by the hospitality industry, with a good percentage of this waste being avoidable. Waste reduction strategies can prevent this waste from adding to greenhouse gas emissions, polluting our water resources, and exacerbating ecosystem harm.

One of the most important benefits of sustainability is the chance to create a healthier working environment for hotel employees. Employee retention is crucial, as it is much cheaper to keep current staff than it is to find and train new hires. Employees are more likely to stay with a company that values their health, wellness, and safety. Shifting to greener energy practices lowers an employee’s daily exposure to toxic emissions.

Going green also likely means that hotels will be more apt to use automation in daily operations, since automation technology can optimize energy usage via sensors and data tracking. Automation tech can also greatly reduce the sheer amount of work hotel staff must attend to throughout the day, lowering stress while leaving room for the added benefit of increased focus on customer experience.

Financial Impact of Green Initiatives

Going green can greatly reduce overhead costs for businesses. Hotels in particular use quite a bit of energy each day, with each guest room accounting for thousands of dollars worth of energy usage each year. Examining which daily operations use the most energy and implementing strategies to address this usage can greatly reduce these costs over time, slashing these expenditures nearly in half.

Addressing food waste will also lower costs. Ninety-five percent of hotels that introduced food waste reduction strategies into their kitchens saw a 7:1 investment return in just two years. This investment amounted to only about 1% of their sales, making it a feasible green option for many businesses.

Since sustainability also requires hotels to take a closer look at their business practices, it can allow hotels to introduce beneficial training and policy changes that can greatly reduce the likelihood of getting hit with costly legal and PR disasters. Seeing as the risk of these concerns is greatly lowered with green operational changes, potential investors are more likely to get involved with sustainable hotels. Even guests are more willing to stay at green hotels – studies show that 85.6% of folks don’t mind dishing out a little extra cash for a visibly eco-conscious hotel.

The Challenges of Going Green

Naturally, there are some challenges businesses must face when going green. First, initial costs for building a more sustainable business can be rather high. For example, installing solar panels can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for commercial businesses, depending on the size of the building. Other changes, such as local food sourcing and employee training only add to the final investment price. This can be difficult for hotels that are rather small and don’t have a great deal of external investors.

Shifting brand identity may cause problems for hotels that are attempting to go green. Though many travelers are keen on the idea of staying at a hotel that focuses on sustainability, others may worry that adjusting practices means a low-quality stay. In turn, hotels must engage in marketing efforts to reassure potential guests that the quality will only improve with these green initiatives, not decrease. This is yet another cost that may pose a burden to some hotels.

How Hotels Can Become More Sustainable

Overall, hotels can make a large sustainable impact by adjusting a few operational practices. First, introducing energy-efficient appliances and smart technology is one of the best ways to begin going green. Lighting is a huge source of commercial energy waste – a viable solution is to introduce smart lighting into hotel rooms and hallways, which use sensor-based technology to track movement and occupational trends in hotels.

Better yet, digital technology can enhance sustainability by allowing for real-time data tracking and reporting. Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in smart devices like thermostats and lighting fixtures allow for remote monitoring and data collection, giving hotels the information they need to continue to make sustainable choices and to include in their own sustainability effort reports.

Other tech choices, such as making the check-in process entirely digital or using digital document storage for internal document management, can reduce a company’s excessive use of paper products and subsequent waste. Not only is this environmentally helpful, but it can also reduce labor and material costs over time.

Introducing Green Design From Conception

While existing hotels can use these changes to go green, new hotels can introduce greener practices into their building design from the start. Designing a climate-resilient structure that anticipates the effects of climate change on a building’s potential energy usage requires innovation.

Heating and cooling accounts for a large portion of energy waste and costs for hotels. Though energy-efficient HVAC systems are a great way to address these concerns, hotels can make choices to further boost this. Green roofs are one solution developers are working on to resolve excessive air conditioning usage. By planting flowers, grass, and other greenery on rooftops, sunlight and heat can be absorbed, preventing the need for additional cooling. This can be multifunctional for hotels: fresh herbs can be grown and used in the kitchen, which can lower dining costs and be a great marketing perk as well.

The Takeaway

Creating a more sustainable hotel environment requires time, effort, and money, but the end result is truly worth it. By implementing these changes visibly, hotels can receive a formal sustainability certification, which entails a proper assessment and verification process. Hotels can use this certification to further attract guests who are concerned with their own environmental impact. Over time, newly green hotels will notice positive changes to annual costs, lowered energy usage, and increased bookings for years to come.

Indiana Lee