Accommodation

Making more sustainable travel choices should be easy. But faced with inconsistent, confusing, – or simply a lack of – information, it’s often anything but. At Travalyst, we’re tackling this challenge head on in the accommodation sector.

From global chains, to boutique hotels, to short-term rentals, the accommodation landscape is incredibly diverse. Sustainability practices and knowledge vary widely, as does operators’ capacity to collect and share this information with travellers. The nature of the sector also means that its footprint is extremely complicated – incorporating energy usage, water consumption, waste management, biodiversity, community impact, and more. Assessing the overall sustainability of accommodation providers is complex, and communicating this clearly to travellers is even more difficult.

Research has shown that travellers care about sustainability, with 83%
of travellers saying that sustainable travel is important to them¹. However, we’ve found that 63% of travellers do not want to spend time researching sustainability when booking their travel².

₁ _Booking.com
₂ _{Source: Travalyst survey; conducted August 2024 of 2,000 UK adults who have flown when travelling abroad}

Improving access to sustainability information for accommodation: live initiatives

Promoting credible sustainability certifications, standards, and schemes

Certifications, standards, and schemes can help accommodation providers assess how their actions impact both people and the planet — and signal to travellers that they take this impact seriously. However, the sustainability certifications industry encompasses a wide range of approaches, creating confusion for both travellers and accommodation providers.

For travellers, it’s not clear what each certification stands for – or how properties are assessed for their sustainability practices. For accommodation providers, pursuing certifications is an expensive and time-consuming endeavour, and it’s important for them to know those efforts will be recognised and visible in booking pathways.

To address this challenge, we worked closely with our partners and our Independent Advisory Group to develop an initial set of criteria, set to evolve over time, that has broad industry alignment. We created a transparent process for certifications to be reviewed based on these criteria, and we publish those that pass on our website for our partners and the wider industry to coalesce around. Learn more about our Certifications criteria.

Creating a central hub for accommodation sustainability data

Travellers’ ability to identify and book more sustainable options is hampered by the fact that there is no single, reliable source for data that consistently measures environmental, social, and economic impact — and then distributes it in a way that makes it easily accessible.

With this in mind, we are collaborating with partners across the sector to identify key sustainability data points and create a central location to collect, process, and ultimately distribute this information at scale.

We are starting with the accommodation sector, but ultimately, this will be expanded across other key areas of the travel ecosystem. This will include the existing aviation data that is compiled through the Travel Impact Model as well as data from the rail sector, conferences and exhibitions, and more.

The Data Hub will:

Consolidate accommodation sustainability data: We will continue to work with our partners to develop a way to collect and display environmental footprint information consistently.
Make that data accessible: We will ensure that this data is easily accessible to partners across the industry and can be integrated directly into the booking platforms used by both corporate and leisure travellers.
Ensure compliance and credibility: We will ensure that the metrics we use align with emerging global regulations, supporting companies using the Data Hub to remain compliant amidst an evolving landscape.

While developing the Data Hub, we will leverage our recent acquisition of Weeva, a sustainability-management platform created specifically for accommodation providers. The intellectual property and functionality we acquired will give us a significant head start in our ongoing efforts to provide sustainability data, open-source, at scale.

Watch back our first Data Hub information exchange webinar.

Sustainability information for accommodation: what we’ve achieved so far

Giving travellers access to comprehensive sustainability information for hotels and vacation rentals, for the first time

Spearheaded by Booking.com, we worked with our partners and industry organisations to select over 60 attributes that could be used to assess each property’s sustainability efforts across five categories:

Energy
Waste
Water
Biodiversity & ecosystems
Destination & community

These attributes were validated by our Independent Advisory Group, and our partners then collected information about these sustainability efforts directly from accommodation providers. This information was then shared with travellers on their platforms, enabling them to make more informed decisions.

Three of the leading accommodation booking platforms – Booking.com, Expedia, and Google – adopted this approach. The result? Millions of data points shared with travellers worldwide.

Stay up to date on our accommodation initiatives

Our Certifications initiative, and Data Hub project, are evolving fast. We’re consulting with the industry and experts at every stage of the process, and for the Data Hub we are now running information sessions to keep the industry informed on our progress. To receive invitations to these webinars, please sign up to receive our newsletter below.