PRAGUE, Czech Republic — More education and guidance are required to guide hoteliers in the right direction regarding sustainability, with the discipline often promoted more in rhetoric than practice, especially in luxury hotels.
Sustainability is mandatory in the top segment — especially among younger generations — but the conversation is not always an easy one when guests are paying exceedingly high average daily rates, according to panelists at the Inspire: Luxury Hospitality Conference. Hoteliers also need to be in step with business travelers who would never book a hotel that was not aligned to their own ESG requirements and mandates.
In Europe, banks insist on sustainability in hotel projects, said Jeroen van Gils, development director for Europe, at WorldHotels, a collection of luxury and lifestyle independent hotels affiliated with global brand company BWH Hotels.
“Our job is to educate and influence. We need to guide hotels so that they are a commercial and sustainability success,” he said.
Irina Tomic, CEO and founder of True Hospitality and the 29-room Hotel Antica on Croatia's Hvar Island — which is affiliated with WorldHotels — said sustainability must be incorporated in every division in a hotel, brand or company portfolio. That comes with challenges in alignment, too, she said.
“In one hotel we have in Croatia, we have staff from 10 different nationalities, so language and understanding must be aligned. That leads to challenges in how [a hotel does its] reporting,” she added.
Otakar John, general manager at the 300-room Stages Hotel Prague, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel, said sustainable policies and conduct need to be shared between a hotel's management, staff and guests. In the luxury space, hotel guests do care about sustainability, but they also have luxury expectations, which can lead to discrepancies in behavior, he added.
“Much of this is common sense, talking to your teams and leading by example. That will eventually lead to your P&L and a positive impact,” John said.
Stefan de Goeij, partner at Cushman & Wakefield and head of sustainability and environmental, social and governance for Central and Eastern Europe, said conversations with user groups started from a base of analyzing the decarbonization and de-risking of assets and the strategies that add value to them.
Angela Pinzón, marketing manager at Nalco Water F&B Europe, a division of Ecolab — and a former president of its global sustainability network leadership team — said water is the one resource that continues to be underrated and overlooked in ESG and that this also requires education.
Water efficiency is likely to become more important in sustainability goals once the hotel industry has energy efficiency under control, de Goeij said. He added he is starting to see premiums going up in Europe from clients willing to pay more for offices and other real estate that are sustainable.
Collaboration
It's up to the hospitality industry to drive the environmental and sustainability changes that are needed, Pinzón said. But clear guidance from regulators would help in this effort, she added.
“In June 2025, the European Commission formally put water at the center of the agenda. Corporations, society, NGOs should partner, which would be a huge sign of intention. Work with your neighbors to help mitigate risks. Water is a shared resource,” she said.
Hoteliers must influence each other in an industry that is a very transparent one, Van Gils said.
“We share data on revenue per available room [for benchmarking], so why not on sustainability numbers. We must challenge each other,” he said.
Balance and common sense have a role in that, John said.
“Things must make sense. If [messaging] goes over an edge, people do not like it anymore. It is easy to lose the meaning of it all if you force people to do something that they do not see as productive,” he said.
One industry standard to achieve green certification for the Stages Hotel Prague saw the P&L hit by energy prices that were between 30% to 40% more expensive, John said.
“We need to share these downsides, too. Stand up as an industry to say, 'No, we’re not going to use that,'” he said. “The option to skip housekeeping? Every hotel has that now, but at the end of the day the real impact for the hotel is non-existent as the hotel has prepaid.”
One thing John said the Stages Hotel Prague is offering is a non-cleaning rate at the original moment of booking.
“If this [rate] is booked, the guest knows [the room will not be cleaned] before the stay and this makes financial success. The future of sustainability is synergies. People appreciate the right to choose,” he said.
More data on hotel sustainability is needed, panelists said.
“Get the right data and showcase it,” van Gils said.
A thorough understanding of data in the hotel and general real estate environment is critical, de Goeij said.
“In hotels, you are partly depending on your guests, but you do have some control. The greener you are, the better terms you get, and this is the gist, but you have to be in control of the data,” he said.
He added in the luxury sector, enveloped in the high average daily rate that segment achieves, ESG is not showcased.
One theme in the ILHA conference was the major influence of emotion in travel and hospitality. The panel agreed that ESG initiatives should be communicated to all with that same level of passion.
“Emotion and sincerity,” Tomic said.
“Add that to the technology already here to scale change. And add to that the shared experiences,” Pinzón added.