Discover how hotels can balance guest satisfaction with environmental responsibility. Take our free assessment here.
Understanding These Sample Results
This example reflects typical priorities for hotels, but your unique property, location, or guest profile may influence your sustainability plan. For customised recommendations that fit your hotel’s size, amenities, and objectives, take our quick materiality assessment quiz. You’ll receive a tailored action plan designed to help you reduce environmental impact, enhance guest experiences, and strengthen your brand’s reputation.
How We Identify Key Impact Areas
Our assessment tool evaluates eight hotel-specific sustainability pillars:
View the sample report below to explore them all in detail.
Using double materiality principles, we analyse both how sustainability issues affect your hotel’s profitability and reputation (such as guest preferences for eco-friendly amenities or regulatory compliance) and how your operations impact the environment and community (like reducing energy use or supporting local suppliers).
Your Custom Sustainability Roadmap
This sample roadmap focuses on high-impact, achievable steps, starting strong with 3 quick wins:
Build Momentum: Targeted Strategies
Each priority area includes expert-backed solutions like:
Track & Share Progress Effectively
We emphasise transparent reporting frameworks and industry certifications to help you:
Ready to move beyond generic advice? Take our free assessment to receive a roadmap addressing your arts, tourism or event businesses unique challenges.
We've estimated your sustainability priorities based on your answers. For a precise evaluation, it would be best to speak to an expert.
There's a lot to consider, but to maximise your efforts here are 3 high impact actions to start with.
Protect local ecosystems and wildlife from damage while educating guests about the unique local species and conservation. You'll preserve the natural beauty around your site as well as enriching the guest experience.
Enable guests to engage with local culture respectfully and ensure local communities share in the benefits. You'll create more positive and authentic experiences for guests as well as goodwill with your neighbours.
Transportation to and from events, especially via air travel, can make up the largest part of their footprint. Implement strategies to reduce this by offering hybrid virtual events, multi-city events, encouraging lower-impact forms of travel, and considering offsets.
Managing energy use and emissions in recreational activities and events. Smart energy choices cut costs, reduce environmental impact, and appeal to eco-conscious participants.
Transportation to and from events, especially via air travel, can make up the largest part of their footprint. Implement strategies to reduce this by offering hybrid virtual events, multi-city events, encouraging lower-impact forms of travel, and considering offsets.
Switch to renewable electricity by installing solar panels or solar lighting where possible, supported by purchasing renewable-powered electricity. This is one of the most significant changes you can make to reduce the carbon footprint of your venue or event and can save you money over time.
Partner with climate-conscious transport providers or upgrade your own fleet to electric vehicles. You'll reduce emissions, often save on fuel costs, and provide a more sustainable journey for your guests.
Upgrade lighting, HVAC systems and building insulation for maximum efficiency. Smart energy management cuts energy bills, creates more comfortable environments for guests, and reduces your carbon footprint.
Install energy-efficient LED lighting and sound systems and intelligent software. You'll reduce power consumption, often get better performance, and create more impressive experiences.
Build climate adaptation strategies into your event planning process. You'll reduce weather-related disruptions, protect guests and staff, and ensure your events succeed despite climate challenges.
Selecting sustainable equipment, food, and materials for recreational activities. Your sourcing choices affect environmental impact and the values message you send to participants.
Source sustainable ingredients and food products like organic, local, and Fairtrade. Sustainable options create talking points, align your offerings with your values and give guests food they can feel good about.
Use responsibly sourced materials and circular design to fit out your space. Designing a sustainable space attracts conscious customers, demonstrates your commitment and creates less waste.
Verify that all your partners follow proper labour and safety standards. Their standards are your standards in the eyes of your customers, so you'll reduce risk to your business as well as ensure quality work and your good reputation.
Feature more vegetarian and plant-forward offerings on your menu. Plant-based food has a significantly lower environmental impact than meat, often has higher margins, and appeals to a broader audience of diners.
Choose sustainable, high quality and locally-sourced merchandise that guests will love and keep. You'll send less waste to landfill, support your local economy, and keep guests coming back.
Switch to non-toxic, low-water and low-waste cleaning products and methods, it works just as effectively while also protecting staff and guest health while reducing environmental impact.
Use recycled-content toilet paper, napkins and other paper items wherever they are used in your business. These simple swaps generally cost the same while reducing the need to cut down trees and showing guests your commitment to sustainability.
Creating a positive workplace for recreation and event staff. Happy, engaged employees provide better guest experiences, reduce turnover, and become ambassadors for your activities.
Align your practices with ILO International Labour Standards while ensuring you meet all local labour laws and industry agreements. Meeting these standards protects your workers' rights and protects your business against legal and reputational issues.
Implement comprehensive health and safety practices to protect your staff from harm. Strong safety protocols and culture protect your team, avoid legal risks, and create a more productive environment.
Foster an environment where employees feel valued, supported, listened to and empowered. A positive culture, inclusion of diversity, employee consultation and mental health protections boost morale, reduce turnover and attract top talent.
Create comprehensive policies that establish clear standards and expectations of employees and business partners. Well-crafted policies reduce risk to your business by ensuring staff alignment and also enable you to articulate business commitments to new starters and stakeholders.
Minimising waste from recreational activities and events. Reducing waste cuts disposal costs, lessens environmental impact, and creates a cleaner, more appealing experience for participants.
Replace disposables with reusable alternatives and maximise collection for recycling. You'll reduce waste, save money in the long run, and visibly demonstrate your commitment to sustainability.
Set up composting for food waste and other organic materials. Composting diverts waste from landfill, reduces emissions, and can fertilise the growth of new food and local gardens.
Protecting ecosystems where recreational activities take place. Responsible land management preserves the natural beauty that attracts visitors and ensures activities can continue.
Protect local ecosystems and wildlife from damage while educating guests about the unique local species and conservation. You'll preserve the natural beauty around your site as well as enriching the guest experience.
Managing water use in recreational facilities and activities. Efficient water practices reduce costs, minimise environmental impact, and help preserve the natural settings people enjoy.
Implement systems to minimise water waste and enable recycling for pools, spas, water features and sports fields. You'll cut water consumption, reduce costs, and demonstrate leadership in resource conservation.
Install water-efficient fixtures and encourage conservation among guests. You'll reduce water consumption, lower utility bills, and help preserve a precious resource.
Building positive relationships with communities where recreation occurs. Strong community ties enhance experiences, prevent conflicts, and create more authentic, enriching activities.
Enable guests to engage with local culture respectfully and ensure local communities share in the benefits. You'll create more positive and authentic experiences for guests as well as goodwill with your neighbours.
Choose reusable or recyclable packaging materials for recreational activities. Sustainable options reduce waste while improving guest satisfaction.
Provide (or require vendors to provide) reusable foodware or ensure any disposable packaging is captured for composting or recycling. Events and tourism have some of the highest levels of waste to landfill, so show you're doing your part.
Operate ethically and disclose sustainability efforts. Accountability and transparency build trust with guests, staff, and communities.
Implement a structured EMS to monitor and manage environmental emissions and hazards. A clear system provides transparency and ensures compliance while driving continuous improvement.
Ensure fair pay for artists and local businesses while considering guest wellbeing. Ethical standards build trust and enrich recreational experiences for everyone.
Collect data on your environmental and social footprint. Tracking performance helps identify opportunities for improvement and demonstrate progress to stakeholders.
Develop a sustainability strategy that identifies your specific environmental and social priority areas with clear targets and an action plan to achieve them. A focused roadmap aligns your team and drives meaningful change.
Report on your sustainability commitments and progress honestly and transparently, and aligned with best practice frameworks. Sharing both the good and the bad builds trust with customers, staff, and stakeholders while showcasing your efforts.
Pursue certifications that validate your sustainability efforts in your operations and offerings. Achieving recognised standards demonstrates leadership, builds credibility, and attracts conscious guests and partners.
Support local community causes and environmental initiatives that are relevant to your business or stakeholders. Creating positive impact for people and planet builds goodwill, strengthens ties, and demonstrates your values in action.
Document your commitment and approach to sustainability with policies and procedures. This maintains consistency, enables you to demonstrate the concrete steps in place to stakeholders and sets you up for future certification.
A materiality assessment is a process for hotels to identify and prioritise the most important ESG issues, such as energy use, waste management, and community engagement.
Hotels need a materiality assessment to focus on issues like reducing energy and water use, minimising waste, and supporting local communities, which can improve guest satisfaction, lower costs, and meet regulatory standards.
The process involves engaging stakeholders, analysing business impacts, and ranking issues by importance. For hotels, this might include assessing guest experience, supply chain ethics, and environmental impact.
Best practice is to update your materiality assessment annually, or when there are significant changes in your business, regulations, or stakeholder expectations.
Begin by taking our industry-specific materiality assessment quiz. This will help you identify your top priorities and create a customised action plan for sustainability.