Sustainable Hospitality Alliance launches ‘universal’ sustainability KPIs

The World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance has announced a new set of environmental, social and governance metrics to standardise sustainability measurement within the hospitality industry.

Introduced at the COP29 Climate Change Conference in Baku this week, the alliance’s Universal Sustainability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) aim to provide hotels with “a consistent, transparent and verifiable method for assessing and reporting their sustainability performance”.

The ‘first wave’ of KPIs is focused on environmental impact and include metrics to measure carbon footprint across Scope 1, 2, and 3 CO2 emissions, water consumption, energy usage and waste management as well as a denominator utilising guest nights and/or occupied room counts for calculations.

Data collection will utilise established methodologies such as the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) and the Hotel Water Measurement Initiative (HWMI) “to ensure accuracy and consistency in reported data”, according to a KPIs overview document published on the alliance website.

The alliance added that it conducted a ‘comprehensive’ review of existing sustainability metrics and consulted a ‘broad range’ of industry stakeholders to develop its universal KPIs, which were also subjected to a voting process to “ensure the metrics are applicable and meaningful for the industry”.

Additional social and governance metrics will be introduced “in future waves”, the alliance said.

In collaboration with UN Tourism, the World Resources Institute and Travalyst, the alliance said it will also update its Hotel Carbon Measurement Tool to include Scope 3 emissions and further align it to the GHG Protocol.

Commenting on the launch of the universal KPIs, CEO of the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, Glenn Mandziuk, said the initiative “not only empowers our industry to take measurable actions against climate change but also ensures we are accountable to the consumers who increasingly demand trust and transparency”.