Q: Can you tell us what Greenview does in the ESG space?
The company grew to include implementing sustainability programs from the corporate level flowing down to the property level. Sustainability needs to be undertaken collaboratively; no one company or country can achieve it on their own. Greenview worked with hotels and others in the industry to standardize the calculation for the carbon footprint of a hotel room night and created benchmarks for water and waste consumption.
Sustainability is a moving target. Benchmarks are never static and evolve. Green Lodging Trends Report (GLTR) tracks the prevalence of best practices over time. It allows hotels to benchmark within the industry and adds innovative approaches. Greenview data enables businesses to track carbon through the value chain. In addition, Greenview monitors innovation to help clients leverage and scale new ideas.
Q: How much data do you have? What is your coverage in terms of advisory advice?
Greenview consults with more than 40 hotel companies across various aspects of ESG. Performance data coverage includes data from 25,000 hotels. Initially, the most extensive coverage area was in the U.S., with strong participation in Asia. With Accor and Radisson joining the initiative, the dataset for Europe and the Middle East has strengthened, and the dataset continues to evolve.
27,000 hotels provide best practice data with the most robust participation in Asia. Now, there is much more interest in data from all parts of the industry, which leads to synergies. While the current coverage tends to be more prominent brands that give the data scale, participation of destination hotels will provide greater penetration among independent hotels.
"It is like running a race. You are going against your own best time. It is good to benchmark and see where you fit on the scale, but ultimately the intention is that it helps you, your owner, your asset manager, your operator do an introspective dive to see what can I improve on, what am I doing, and what am I not doing?"
Q: What is the next step in the hotel industry's environmental journey?
It is all about net zero. The heart of net zero is zero emission across the entire value chain for a business. It will take years to figure out how to do all the calculations in tracking source 1, 2 and 3 emissions, but more companies are looking into the carbon calculation. For full-service hotels, food and beverage services have a high carbon intensity. For example, a meal including beef products will create more carbon in the value chain than a vegan meal with a lower carbon footprint. Hotels will focus on decarbonizing their buildings, as well as reducing waste and energy consumption. The initial cost of implementing energy-saving programs might be higher, but the cost of utilities should be reduced over the longer term.
Quantifying the return on value or the premium for a green building is a struggle; however, the regulatory environment is changing, and buildings will have to be more efficient over time. Planning for efficiencies now will protect hotels in the long term as regulations and incentives change. Greenview expects a proliferation of regulations that will be rolled out asymmetrically worldwide.
Q: What will we see in terms of growth in environmental certifications? What is the benefit of these certifications?
It is hard to get a critical mass of data to determine the benefit of green versus non-green projects; however, data might be attainable on the operational side. Process-based certifications that set out criteria for how efficiently hotels manage their systems should become more prevalent, along with more general sustainable operations certifications like the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) certification. When environmental systems within a building are operating well, companies can achieve environmental benefits. As more hotels implement efficient operational systems, more data will be available to prove the benefit of green operations.
Q: What are you seeing in the social and governance area?
Hotels need staff at the property level to be motivated to support environmental programs. Putting social initiatives first and developing relationships with the community encourages employees to get behind the other green efforts. Ultimately, the staff will drive the performance and success of operational programs that measure environmental efficiencies.
Q: What is Greenview’s goal over the next 12 to 24 months?
One goal is to bring scale where Greenview can lend a hand in places like destinations. We hope to assist companies in scaling the implementation of sustainability programs from individual hotels to entire portfolios.
Q: Do you think net zero emissions targets are realistic? Will the industry meet the targets?
Some hotels will meet the targets. Some will not. The key will be renewable energy and the ability to source renewable energy through a market mechanism or other means. It is possible to reach targets when energy costs are considered as a percentage of revenues. Uniform System of Accounts in the Lodging Industry (USALI) now presents energy and waste expenses as a percentage of revenue rather than just a line-item cost for utilities. Hotels can meet these targets; however, the travel buyer, owners and governments must be on the same page.
