ANALYSIS: 5 January 2009

How green issues are coming to the fore

When the economic downturn hit business travel in the last quarter of the old year, the immediate assumption was that concern for green issues would be among the first casualties.

This does not seem to be the case. Paul Tilstone, chief executive of the UK and Ireland Institute of Travel Management (ITM) argued strongly in an ABTN Comment in October that the economy and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) were complimentary rather than opponents.

He added:  "If...you're talking about how much at the fore environment is going to be as the economy bites harder, the answer is that at ITM we believe the two are definitely not at odds. In fact, economy seems to be driving environment up the agenda by default."

The point was emphasised by Alexandra Hammond, responsible business manager for the Rezidor Hotel Group, at a seminar on CSR organised in November by Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Ms Hammond, while responsible for environmental practice at the Radisson SAS in Edinburgh, cut the property's landfill waste by 50%, reduced use of gas by 30% and electricity by 20% which demonstrates Mr Tilstone's point that CSR and good business can go hand in hand.

At the CWT event, Ms Hammond stressed how a growing number of companies were putting green issues into their RFPs for hotels. "RFP questions are getting more and more interesting," she told the audience. "We are being asked things like how many metres of water are used per guest night.

"We see it in our restaurants where people are asking for locally sourced food. A flashy label for a hotel is now not good enough. Customers are looking for a lot of their green questions to be solved by the hotels."

Later Ms Hammond told ABTN: "I think there is a tendency for a company to tick a box saying we have an environmental policy and it is all sorted. But in the last two years or so, more and more companies have been jumping onto green issues. They want to know how much water you are using, how much waste you produce."

Rezidor itself has a seven-point responsible business policy, endorsed by its president and ceo Kurt Ritter. The policy aims to promote environmental awareness among both staff and guests. For example, points two and seven read respectively: "We shall inform and make it easy for our guests to participate in Responsible Business related activities at our hotels" and "We shall do our utmost to ensure that our business is environmentally sustainable, and that we continuously improve performance in the areas of energy, water, chemicals and resource consumption, and waste generation."

Ms Hammond said: "It was in 2007 that we saw a real push and we started to look at every RFP that came through. There were questions like ‘Do you do carbon offsetting?' I think that with an increasing awareness of green issues and of the input of travel, accommodation and meetings, our clients are getting more and more savvy and require much more from us."

Matthew Roberts

Mr Roberts said most corporate customers now wanted to know what sustainability policies Hilton had in place and what its commitment to the environment was. "Increasingly, we are also being asked to supply information on carbon measurement so that companies can calculate the carbon footprint of their hotel spend," he said.

He added: "These are not necessarily new questions, however heightened public awareness on these matters is driving companies to look more favourably towards green considerations and corporate clients are taking more of an interest in the track record of businesses on green matters."

Both Ms Hammond and Mr Roberts agree that the questions are becoming more important to their clients - but it has not yet reached that critical stage where a customer says "thanks but no thanks"  because of a hotel's green policy.

Mr Roberts said: "I think we have still to get to this point. The importance of location, price and service mean that companies are not yet making buying decisions solely on the basis of a hotel's approach to sustainability."

But Ms Hammond believes that it will be the "next stage - at the moment they are not giving us an ultimatum per se." Partly she believes it is a lack of information - good, solid data on waste levels, electricity and gas use per hotel - that might be holding customers back.

But this is only likely to be a matter of time before such figures become available. Then perhaps things will change and hotels will come under more pressure than ever before.