The World Sustainable Travel & Hospitality Awards (‘WSTHA’) has announced that its inaugural ceremony will take place at the historic Cahal Pech Archaeological Reserve in Belize, the official host destination. Leaders in sustainable tourism will gather for the VIP reception on 27 September 2024 when the winners will be unveiled.

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to the Responsible Hoteliers Summit, taking place in Dubai the day after the FHS World.

This event promises to be an extraordinary gathering of industry leaders, innovators, and enthusiasts, all united by a shared passion for excellence in hospitality. At the event, you will have the opportunity to engage in insightful discussions, attend enlightening workshops, and network with peers who are just as committed to pushing the boundaries of our industry.

Join us for this productive and inspiring event, which is open to all Alliance members and partners.

We are honoured that our Summit will run as part of The Hospitality Show, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, in collaboration with the American Hotel and Lodging Association and Questex.

The event will see our entire network of members and partners come together to share exciting updates, reflect on our achievements in 2024 and map out action for 2025. Over the course of this three-day Summit, we aim to facilitate critical discussions surrounding Net Positive Hospitality in action – sharing best practices, exploring opportunities for innovation and forging new collaborations.

Hospitality is an essential and major component of business travel. Business travellers spend more money on lodging than any other vertical (US $394 billion in 2022), and hotel procurement makes up a massive part of managed travel programs, with travel managers often assessing thousands of hotel RFP (Request for Proposal) responses every year. With more and more travel programmes incorporating sustainability goals into their supplier relationships, it is imperative that corporate travel buyers have a straightforward way to analyse the sustainability of their hotel suppliers.

In June 2024, the GBTA Foundation, in collaboration with GBTA’s Sustainability Committee and with support from the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, released the new Sustainable Procurement Standards for the hotel sector, or a library of sustainability (People + Planet) questions to support corporate travel buyers in evaluations of their suppliers.

The Standards are now available for free download: https://gbtafoundation.org/publications/sustainable-procurement-standards/

Watch the webinar recording to learn more about the Standards and how they can be used by both buyers and their hotel partners to foster a more responsible travel ecosystem.

Head of Sustainability Pathway, Standards and Reporting at the Alliance, Claire Whitely, joins Senior Manager at Greenview, Rehmaashini Jagarajan, to explore how to navigate sustainable growth, in which they review recent data from the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index (CHSB).

The webinar, hosted jointly by the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (the Alliance) and Greenview, detailed the CHSB and its methodology, as well as key findings from the latest data, which include the Alliance’s Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) and Hotel Water Measurement Initiative (HWMI) data. Both methodologies provide standardised, industry-backed data to end users. The insights will highlight how any hotel can calculate its carbon footprint and benchmark its energy, water and carbon emissions at low cost, sourced from a dataset of over 27,000 hotels globally.

Access our free webinar, in cooperation with BVA BDRC and PACE Dimensions, to discover answers to some of the biggest branding, consumer demand and behaviour change questions, including:

• What are the biggest markets and customer segments for sustainable travel?
• What aspects of sustainability are customers willing to pay a premium for?
• How do customers perceive your brand and its competitors?
• How can you build confidence and trust with your customers?
• How can you effectively influence customer choice and behaviour?

In this session, discover the importance of climate-proofing the hotel industry and the strong business case for green and resilient hotels, and gain an overview of some of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s free tools and resources to help kickstart your climate journey.

Learn about EDGE, an innovation of IFC, a member of the World Bank Group. EDGE is a green building standard and a certification system that empowers building professionals to quickly and easily determine the most cost-effective ways to build green based on building type and the local climate. See how the built-in financial calculator makes connections between technical measures and profitability, within a live demo of the EDGE platform (free to use through the generosity of our donors),

Explore the topic of risk and how hotels can respond to climate risks and build their resilience, using the Destination Water Risk Index (DWRI) and the Building Resilience Index. DWRI maps areas of high water stress against areas of high hotel growth, enabling companies and investors to explore, assess, financially value and respond to water risks, in current and planned operation.

This practical session explores sustainability challenges and solutions within food procurement, consumption and waste management.

Providing useful tools and expert insights from the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, World Wildlife Fund, Marine Stewardship Council, and World Resources Institute, the webinar has been created with hotel sustainability representatives, hospitality practitioners, and hotel general managers in mind. It is also be suitable for kitchen managers, head chefs and others involved in managing food within your hotels.

At this exclusive event, we convened our entire membership to tackle the key challenges and opportunities in our industry – facilitating critical dialogue centring around best practices, innovation, and Net Positive Hospitality in action.

The Summit united senior leaders from across the hospitality industry, including CEOs and C-suite members from leading hotels, resorts, accommodation companies, real estate owners, investment funds, technology companies, procurement specialists, as well as legal and consulting firms.

Made some very exciting announcements at ITB Berlin, including unveiling the 21 World Sustainable Travel & Hospitality Awards categories and a ground-breaking new partnership with Belize Tourism Board.

What’s more, as proud sponsor of the Gender Equality Champion of the Year Awards, joined Equality in Tourism as they crowned two winners!

Alliance team members will also be sharing their expertise within panels and roundtables across the event.

At the event, Glenn participated in the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)’s side-event – ‘Tourism United for Climate Action – Delivering on the Commitments of the Glasgow Declaration’ – within which he announced our new digital Pathway, Resource Directory and Hospitality Member Directory.

We are also pleased to have unveiled an ambitious vision for a new level of EDGE green building certification and Building Resilience Index, in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

We were delighted to bring together our entire network of members are partners at our biggest event of the year.

Our powerful theme of ‘Mainstreaming Net Positive Hospitality’ reflects our commitment to driving positive change within the hospitality industry, as we strive to make sustainability a core component of mainstream operations. It aligns seamlessly with our recently launched 5-year strategy, cementing our dedication to creating a more sustainable and responsible future for the sector.

We were delighted to bring our entire membership together in Berlin, to share expertise, take part in insightful discussions and present our new five-year strategy.

The II Sustainable Destinations Summit brought together a wide range of tourism and non-tourism stakeholders to debate and share visions, experiences, knowledge, and good practices for accelerating the transformation of tourism into a force for good.

Alliance CEO, Glenn Mandziuk, moderated a panel exploring ‘precompetitive cooperation for sustainable actions’, alongside panellists from Radisson Hotels, MindClick, Best Western Hotel Group Italy.

We are delighted to have played a key role in the United Nations 2023 Water Conference, which provides a unique opportunity for the world to come together and accelerate our collective action towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 and all other water-related goals and targets.

At the event, our CEO, Glenn Mandziuk, joined UNWTO Executive Director, Zoritsa Urosevic, Austrian National Tourist Office Head of Market USA, Michael Gigl, and World Travel & Tourism Council Director of Sustainability, Christopher Imbsen, at a UNWTO side event – Water and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities. The panel explored the need for companies to put water at the centre of their action plans and highlighted the destinations facing high water-related risks. This included launching our new Destination Water Risk Index (DWRI), developed in collaboration with Greenview, STR and Ecolab.

We are delighted to have launched version two of the Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality at a press conference at ITB Berlin. At the event, we also unveiled the CEOs who have become the founding members and partners of the SMI Hospitality and Tourism Task Force, followed by a CEO Panel, organised by the Alliance, which explored how we can connect the dots on ESG. We are also pleased to have taken part in a number of other insightful panels across the event.

We are proud to have brought the industry together for a roundtable event to share their actions, insights and experience, and set the pathway for the next crucial steps in advancing ethical recruitment and employment across the industry and the wider value and supply chains.

At the event, Glenn took part in a press conference to mark our joint commitment to Nature Positive Travel & Tourism, with WTTC and UNWTO, and announced our leadership of the SMI Hospitality Task Force, alongside Considerate Group, read more below.

Glenn’s involvement included speaking on the implementation of the Glasgow Declaration and our updated Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative at the UNWTO side-event on Policies and corporate strategies scaling up climate action in tourism, as well as presenting on climate and water action in destinations at the UNWTO Meeting of the Committee on Tourism Sustainability – highlighting some of our regional programmes which focus on water risk and supply chains.

The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance hosted a high-level industry summit on Net Positive: Hospitality with purpose, for people, planet and prosperity, featuring a range of expert speakers and panellists who examined the current sustainability challenges and driving factors, and shared best practice examples and expertise of current actions and innovations. The event also featured high-level discussions which feed into the development of the Alliance’s new five-year strategy, enabling every part of the industry to contribute towards achieving the global targets set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

To mark the launch of our Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality for the Planet, we were delighted to join a panel of CEOs from leading hospitality companies and asset owners as part of ITB Berlin, “How to Walk the Talk? The Hospitality CEOs on Sustainability”, on 10 March 2022.