About the Decarbonising Hotel Food Systems white paper
Food is central to the hotel experience and can be pivotal to a hotel’s success. Yet managing food well is a complex operation. Many hotels provide three meals a day, prepared on-site and covering a much wider range of guest needs and expectations than most other food service operations. Mounting external pressures, such as risks to supply and rising costs, are adding even greater complexity to hotel food operations and posing risks to business continuity. Hotels can be particularly exposed to these risks compared to other food system actors.
At the same time, sustainability is a growing challenge to hotel food systems and to the world’s food systems in general. Today’s food systems are responsible for one-quarter of all global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are also depleting biodiversity – crucial for producing food – at an alarming rate. Much of this damage arises from growing demand for resource- and emissions-intensive foods, particularly meat, unsustainable farming techniques, and high levels of food loss and waste. Letting these trends and practices continue makes climate change worse and food systems increasingly fragile and unreliable.
Making food systems sustainable helps foster connections with guests. It also makes a hotel business more resilient, as well as helping companies meet their climate and nature goals.
This report sets out a pathway to reduce aggregate GHG emissions from hotel food by 30% by 2030, cutting nearly 70 million tons a year from the sector’s footprint as well as delivering benefits for nature and communities.
Who is it for?
This paper is for the entire industry and provides insight for people working in kitchens to supply chain and procurement specialists.
How was it created?
This paper was developed by the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, Iberostar Hotels & Resorts and the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), with the support of Systemiq. The paper was undertaken in consultation with members of the hospitality industry to explore how hotels can shift to more sustainable food systems, with particular attention on how to reduce food-related emissions. The work received invaluable inputs from Alliance members, other hospitality players, and sustainability experts – allowing us to develop a clearer picture of the environmental impacts that today’s hotel food systems have and identify the key solutions that will have the biggest impact. The paper builds on the rich research and landscape of initiatives that already exist in the space, including the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme, a UN Tourism and UNEP initiative.
