Radisson Hotel Group is to become the latest major accommodation provider to join HRS’s Green Stay Initiative (GSI) aimed at helping corporates to make their hotel programmes more sustainable.
The GSI programme gives each individual property a sustainability rating that can be used both in RFP (request for proposal) processes and to encourage travellers to book more environmentally friendly hotels by highlighting them in the booking platforms.
Inge Huijbrechts, Radisson’s global SVP of sustainability, security and corporate communications, said that the company’s 1,100 hotels around the world would “gradually” join the GSI programme, starting with an initial group of properties in Europe during the current quarter.
Huijbrechts added that the plan was for all of Radisson’s hotels to eventually “reach at least the basic level” of sustainability rating offered by HRS, known as Hotel Sustainability Basics, by 2024.
She stressed the importance of having a sustainability label that was “trusted”, as well as being “seamless and simple” for both corporates and their travellers.
Corporate accommodation specialist HRS launched the Green Stay Initiative in 2021 and already has major hotel groups, such as Marriott and Accor, taking part. German pharma giant Siemens has also partnered with HRS to make environmental impact reporting a mandatory part of its global hotel programme.
Green Stay will allow Radisson’s properties to “convey their green attributes to corporate procurement audiences”, as well as simplifying the RFP process with HRS’s corporate clients.
Each property is given a score from 1 to 10 based on a corporate’s sustainability priorities with this figure fed into the RFP process. The score takes into account a hotel's energy consumption, water use and waste disposal to determine its footprint value. Hotels with a high sustainability score are given a green "leaf" symbol in search results when a traveller is looking to book.
“We’ve collaborated with Radisson Hotel Group on several automation-focused projects in recent years, so we’re pleased to move forward with GSI,” added HRS’s CEO Tobias Ragge.
“Resource-challenged hotels gain from precisely this type of automation as they seek to compete for corporate room nights even as they tightly manage their sales-related expenses.”
Martin Biermann, HRS’s chief product officer, added that corporates were becoming more focused on reporting accurately on their emissions, including Scope 3 data covering business travel, due to the forthcoming introduction of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
This directive, which requires more companies to publish detailed information about their impact on the environment, will be introduced in phases from 1 January 2024, starting with larger organisations.
“They want to know which hotels are making an effort to reduce their footprint,” added Biermann. “Any indicator where they can compare and understand the efforts of the hotels will help them to make smart decisions, which ultimately helps them to reach their Science Based Targets.
“It’s about where can we get that data? Can we trust that data and can we compare the data? They also want to know if it can be audited.”
Radisson, which aims to be net-zero on emissions by 2050, has already introduced initiatives such as creating carbon-neutral meetings at its hotels.