Have you ever considered how much your hotel stay impacts the environment? From energy use to waste management, your choice of accommodation plays a big part in your carbon footprint. Thankfully, tools like the Greenview Footprinting Tool and the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) are making it easier to understand and reduce that impact. These tools are helping hotels and travellers alike take practical steps toward sustainability.
Let’s look at how these tools work, why Costa Rica has one of the lowest hotel carbon footprints (just 4.7kg CO₂ per room night!), why the Maldives is much higher (a hefty 152.5kg), and how you can encourage hotels to take action.
What Is the Greenview Footprinting Tool?
The Greenview Footprinting Tool is a go-to resource for calculating the carbon footprint of hotels around the world. It pulls data from the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Tool (CHSB), which gathers information from major hotel chains. This gives travellers and businesses a sense of the average carbon emissions per room night for specific countries and regions.
But there’s one catch: the tool is always two years behind. This lag happens because the CHSB publishing process takes time. Hotels collect and submit their data in the third quarter of the year following the reporting period. Then, the data goes through checks for accuracy, aggregation, and final analysis before being published. While this ensures reliability, it also means the numbers don’t always reflect recent changes—like hotels adopting renewable energy or improving efficiency.
Why Real-Time Reporting with HCMI Matters
That’s where the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) comes in. Developed by the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, HCMI gives hotels a free, standardised way to measure their actual carbon footprint. Unlike Greenview’s averages, HCMI focuses on real-time data, reflecting what’s happening at individual hotels right now.
Here’s the good news: HCMI is completely free for hotels to use. As a traveller or a TMC (Travel Management Company), you can encourage hotels to participate. It’s as simple as asking them to adopt the tool and reminding them that help is available if they need it. ECOsmart Hotels that calculate their footprint through HCMI are featured on our interactive ECOmap, making it easy for environmentally conscious travellers to find and choose them. Plus, this data is accessible via our API, so bookers and agents can integrate it directly into their reporting and decision-making processes.
The Carbon Footprint Range: From Costa Rica to the Maldives
The carbon footprint of a hotel room varies enormously depending on where you’re staying. Here’s how the extremes compare:
Costa Rica: 4.7kg CO₂ per Room Night
Costa Rica’s commitment to sustainability makes it a standout. The country relies on 99% renewable energy, including hydropower, geothermal, and wind, which drastically reduces the emissions from hotels. Many Costa Rican hotels also focus on local sourcing and waste reduction, which keeps their carbon footprints low. Tourism here is often built around preserving biodiversity, so sustainability is woven into the way hotels operate.
The Maldives: 152.5kg CO₂ per Room Night
At the other end of the spectrum, the Maldives faces some significant challenges. Its high carbon footprint is largely due to:
- Heavy Import Reliance: Almost everything, from food to building materials, is shipped or flown in.
- Diesel Power: With limited renewable energy options, most hotels depend on diesel generators.
- Luxury Tourism: High-end resorts often have private pools, air conditioning, and desalination plants, which are very energy-intensive.
This huge difference highlights how much local infrastructure and hotel practices influence carbon emissions.
Where Does the UK Sit?
In the UK, the carbon footprint per room night is:
- 10.4kg outside London.
- 11.5kg in London.
This is lower than the global average thanks to increasing renewable energy use and energy-efficient hotel practices. However, there’s always room for improvement, and HCMI is helping UK hotels pinpoint and reduce inefficiencies.
What Can You Do to Help?
As a traveller or a TMC, you have more influence than you might think. Here’s how you can make a difference:
- Encourage Hotels to Use HCMI: Remind them it’s free, easy to use, and we’re here to help them get started.
- Highlight the Benefits: Hotels that calculate and share their carbon footprints:
- Increase transparency with guests.
- Appeal to eco-conscious travellers.
- Gain recognition for their efforts.
- Help corporate companies report their scope 3 carbon emissions correctly.
- Choose Reported Data: Use tools like our ECOmap to find hotels that have completed HCMI reporting. Supporting these hotels shows that sustainability matters to you.
Your interest and encouragement can motivate hotels to start tracking and improving their carbon footprints, making a real difference.
Why Combining HCMI and Greenview Works Best
Using both the Greenview Footprinting Tool and HCMI gives us the best of both worlds:
- Greenview: Offers reliable long-term trends but is always two years behind.
- HCMI: Provides real-time, hotel-specific data that reflects immediate changes.
Together, they provide a more complete picture, helping travellers, TMCs, and hotels make smarter, more sustainable decisions.
Final Thoughts
Reducing the environmental impact of travel is a shared responsibility, and the tools to do it are getting better all the time. With Costa Rica leading the way at 4.7kg CO₂ per room night and the Maldives highlighting areas for improvement at 152.5kg, it’s clear that informed choices can make a big difference.
Whether you’re booking a weekend getaway or managing travel for a business, encouraging hotels to adopt HCMI is a simple, impactful step. By supporting hotels that are transparent about their carbon footprints, you’re helping to drive industry-wide change.
So next time you book a room, think beyond the pool or the view. Ask about the hotel’s carbon footprint, and make sustainability part of your journey.
