Universal sustainability: Working together for a greener hospitality industry
The end of 2024 saw the first-ever joint session of Tourism Ministers in Azerbaijan, where The World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance launched its groundbreaking list of universal sustainability KPIs for the world’s hospitality industry.
Focusing on CO2 emissions, water and energy usage and waste management, the first wave of KPIs emphasised transparent and consistent methods of reporting for businesses to assess their performances.
The initiative is part of the COP29 Declaration on Enhanced Climate Action in Tourism, which set out to emphasise the importance of action within the hospitality industry to help tackle the global climate crisis while retaining economic sustainability.
The KPIs aim to drive consumers to make more sustainable travel choices and help hospitality businesses create positive change for the environment.
So, what does this mean for our customers? And how can we work together to make significant steps towards a sustainable future for the industry?
At Zonal Hotel Solutions, we are truly committed to helping our customers achieve the targets set out for them by organisations such as The World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance. Here, we discuss how our integrations and products can help hoteliers reach their sustainability goals.
Zonal’s Environmental Integrations
The hospitality sector accounts for up to 15% of UK greenhouse gases, and with growing concern amongst guests about sustainability, it’s never been more important for businesses to uphold their environmental promises. In fact, the latest findings by YouGov show that 64% of British consumers are willing to pay up to 10% more for sustainable foods and drinks and Visit Britain reports that 58% of people want to stay in accommodation with green awards and environmentally friendly practices.
Zonal’s host of environmental integrations are designed to boost your tech stack, and help your hotel go green.
Net Zero Now
Net Zero Now helps hospitality businesses reach the carbon emissions KPI set out by the alliance, with automated carbon accounting, tailored emissions reduction plans and a trusted Certification Mark.
The software automatically generates reports for all relevant disclosures and provides clear strategies for businesses on how to cut their emissions, while enhancing their brand reputation and building trust with green-conscious customers.
Play It Green
It’s been found that 81% of consumers believe companies should help to improve the environment, so Play It Green supports hospitality businesses to actively demonstrate positive change.
This integration offers diners in your hotel’s restaurant the chance to rebalance the carbon impact of their meals and gift to charity whilst paying their bill. Each automatically added (but non-fixed) £1 plants two trees and regifts 10p to charity. Play it Green also provides staff training on sustainable culture within the workplace and educational articles for hotels and restaurants.
GiftTrees
With our Gift Trees integration, it costs you nothing to help offset the environmental impact of meals from your hotel and help lift people out of extreme poverty. Diners in your hotel’s restaurants can opt into a small fee of £1.23 on their final bill to help provide farming families with food, income, access to education, clothing, medicine, and safe homes.
GiftTrees is seamlessly integrated with Zonal’s EPoS, allowing hoteliers to easily boost their societal impact and benefit the environment through investment in agroforestry systems.
Zero Carbon Forum
By helping businesses to drill down into their specific brand, site, supplier or ingredient-level emissions on a granular level, Zero Carbon Forum provides industry benchmarks to help each individual team member recognise the carbon impact of their daily practices whilst working at your hotel.
Through easily accessible and detailed data reports, this integration helps hospitality businesses identify the depth of their carbon footprint and put actionable processes into place to cut emissions and financial losses.
Waste Management
Restaurants and hotels lose a huge £2.6 billion to 1 million tonnes of food waste each year in the UK, 75% of which could be avoided. The World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance has calculated that 18% of all world food waste is created by the hospitality industry, citing it as a ‘priority’ within its recent KPIs.
To enable hoteliers to tackle this, Zonal’s Purchase-to-Pay system alerts kitchen staff when stock is running low and gives real-time recommendations for re-ordering and menu planning based on individual requirements and guest behaviour.
The software automatically sends an order to suppliers for fulfilment, saving chefs precious time and streamlining kitchen operations. This process significantly reduces food waste and over-ordering, greatly cutting costs and helping the environment.
As we move into 2025, it’s evident that sustainability must be at the forefront of every hotelier’s business plan. With help from Zonal’s comprehensive suite of technology, hitting sustainability KPIs will become more accessible, streamlined and comprehensive than ever.
To read more about the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance and COP29 Declaration on Enhanced Climate Action in Tourism, visit: https://sustainablehospitalityalliance.org/universal-sustainability-kpis-cop29/.