The latest Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index, undertaken by Greenview, examined the industry’s consumption of energy, water and carbon and shows that carbon emissions per square meter of hotels around the world has decreased 10 percent since 2015. The greatest reduction was across hotels in the U.K., where the carbon footprint dropped 23.4 percent on average between 2015 and 2018. Hotels in India, Canada and the U.S. experienced a decrease of 14.4 percent, 13.6 percent and 12.1 percent respectively. Hotels in China showed slightly less improvement at a 7.4 percent average reduction in carbon footprint..
Of the countries contained within the index, in 2018, hotels in Switzerland had the lowest carbon intensity (20.4 kg CO2 emissions per square meter), whereas those in South Africa had the highest (209.78 kg CO2 emissions per square meter). At city level, Montreal’s hotels are the best performing (24.63 kg CO2 emissions per square meter) while in Abu Dhabi the average hotel emits 251.55 kg CO2 emissions per square meter, the highest in the index.
Open to hotels and hotel companies of all sizes, CHSB serves as a peer-based reference for assessing the hotel industry worldwide. Hotels were benchmarked regarding energy, water and carbon performance against competitive sets in the same geography, segment and climate zone. With more than 14,000 participants from 55 countries representing global brands like Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Mandarin Oriental, Marriott, Park Hotel Group, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust and others, this seventh iteration of CHSB saw an increase of 25 percent in participation.