Launch of Standardised Approach to Carbon Measurement in Tourism

The Red Carnation Hotel Collection is proud to announce its collaboration with the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC, UK), the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and a selection of international hotel companies to launch a standardised approach to carbon measurement.

Three of Red Carnation’s luxury boutique properties, selected to give a good cross-section of the collection’s output, were involved in trials to pilot the scheme: The Oyster Box Hotel in Durban, one of the collection’s most recent renovations; The Milestone Hotel, the flagship London property, and The Chesterfield Mayfair, one of the collection’s busiest four-star properties.

The methodology, which launched this week during the Rio+20 United Nations Conference, has been devised by the ITP and WTTC, in collaboration with 23 leading global hospitality companies, and is designed to calculate and communicate the carbon footprint of hotel stays and meetings in a consistent and transparent way.
The group saw an opportunity to improve how the hotel industry communicates its impacts. Currently, approaches to measuring and reporting on carbon emissions vary widely. This can lead to confusion amongst consumers, particularly corporate clients, looking to understand their own potential carbon footprint and meet their own goals/targets in this area. In addition, the number of methodologies and tools in use make transparency of reporting within the hotel industry difficult to achieve.

The Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) Working Group, comprising of hotel members within ITP and WTTC, was formed in early 2011 at the request of member companies to address inconsistencies in hotel companies’ approaches and to devise a unified methodology based on available data. The methodology named ‘HCMI 1.0’ is a consolidated move, led by the hotel industry, to establish a global standardised approach to this common problem for the hotel sector and its corporate customer base.
The methodology, informed by the GHG Protocol Standards, was first developed in 2011 and has since been tested in hotels of different style and size in different geographical locations and refined through a stakeholder engagement process, with input from consultants KPMG. It has also been reviewed by the World Resources Institute.

The priority for the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative moving forward will be to maximise the take up and recognition of the methodology by a broader range of hotels and their customers. A review process has been put in place to ensure the methodology may be further refined as user feedback and new research come to light.

The Red Carnation Hotel Collection will be implementing the initiative across all fourteen of its properties, championed by the in-house green team, which is chaired by Jonathan Raggett. All staff will be educated on the processes and it will form part of all new inductions, regular newsletter communications, monthly and annual company presentations and staff incentives. The company will also be enthusiastic advocates of the scheme to external partners, clients and guests to ensure that the methodology is understood and embraced by the industry and the consumer.