Munich-based pharmaceutical giant Siemens has partnered with lodging platform HRS to make environmental impact reporting a mandatory part of its global hotel programme, the companies announced on Friday (21 October).
The company will integrate HRS’ Green Stay Initiative (GSI) as part of its travel policy and has developed a ‘global, traceable, and standardised criteria’ by which the carbon footprint of each individual hotel can be tracked and compared with others. According to HRS, this is the first global standard using traceable criteria to compare hotel sustainability.
Siemens head of global mobility services Thorsten Eicke said implementing the GSI policy will allow the company to “finally close a gap because, for our other suppliers, we already had a comparable standard thanks to our Carbon Web Assessment. We can now steer our hotel volume to support our ambitions for going green”.
Hotel providers will be required to provide data about their environmental impact, including information on energy and water consumption and waste per occupied room night, in order to calculate their carbon footprint – and prioritise accordingly – in the company’s internal booking tool.
From 2023 the company will select its preferred hotel suppliers according to sustainability criteria defined by GSI and adjusted according to Siemens’ own sustainability framework. Prior to the pandemic, the company booked more than two million room nights annually. More than half of its hotel suppliers have already provided their data.
Launched in March 2021, HRS' Green Stay Initiative allows users to select hotels based on sustainability scores and currently includes more than 300 hotel chains and thousands of properties in 130 countries.
HRS CEO Tobias Ragge, said: “We’ve noted that a number of our Fortune 500 clients have begun making definitive requests regarding sustainability-related metrics in their initial hotel request for proposals for 2023.
“That said, given their pioneering history, I’m not surprised in the least to see Siemens taking the lead with this public pronouncement.”