Climate action

Climate change and the hospitality industry

Climate change is a global issue that is affecting communities, lives, businesses and economies all over the world. The World Economic Forum has now ranked climate action failure as the top global risk, demonstrating the urgent need for governments, businesses and people to act.¹

Global emissions of carbon dioxide have increased by almost 50 per cent since 1990.² This is having a notable impact on our climate. Every decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the one before,³ and we are seeing extreme weather events damaging lives and livelihoods around the world, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable people.

Climate change is already affecting the hospitality sector. Extreme weather is increasing the cost of operations and reducing the number of tourists visiting certain destinations, while local and national environmental policies and penalties are being introduced in cities and countries around the world.

The hotel sector accounts for around 1% of global carbon emissions⁴ and this is set to increase. Hospitality, like other industries, has a responsibility to manage its impact on our planet.

We encourage the industry to set science-based targets and reduce their emissions at scale.

Background to our work on climate action

Our research found that the hotel industry needs to reduce its carbon emissions by 66 per cent per room by 2030, and by 90 per cent per room by 2050 to ensure that the growth forecast for the industry does not lead to a corresponding increase in carbon emissions.⁵ The industry will need to go even further to help limit warming to 1.5^oC and avoid the very worst impacts of climate change.⁶

What we are doing

Working collectively with the industry, we are driving action on climate change through:

• Supporting hotels to reduce carbon emissions
• Promoting sustainable building design
• Encouraging renewable energy usage
• Providing tools and resources to address single-use plastic and sustainable procurement
• Encouraging biodiversity protection and regeneration

We are doing this by:

Convening the industry

• Our climate action working group brings our members together to share expertise and address carbon emissions and sustainable procurement.

Practical action

• We have developed a selection of free practical tools, research and resources to enable every hotel to manage their carbon emissions and environmental impact.
• Our tools include our Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative for effective monitoring and benchmarking of carbon emissions across the industry.

Building a movement

• We engage with the broader industry to raise awareness of the risk of climate action failure.
• We are promoting the financial benefits of sustainable building design to hotel investors, owners and operators to increase collaboration among business partners during hotel construction and refurbishment.

Global partnerships for sustainable development

• We worked with IFC – part of the World Bank – on the business case for sustainable hotels and the need for investment in sustainable hotel refurbishments.
• We collaborated with One Planet (UNWTO and UNEP) to develop a plastic measurement methodology and tool for hotels, to support signatories of the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative and the wider industry.
• We were one of the launch partners and a founding signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, an initiative designed to align the sector and catalyse collaborative solutions to climate change. Find out more about our Climate Action Plan here.