Skift Take
What's keeping hotel executives up at night these days? For some, it's looming reporting requirements for sustainability.
Early Check-In
Editor’s Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill brings readers exclusive reporting and insights into hotel deals and development, and how those trends are making an impact across the travel industry.
What's worrying hotel executives these days? Jeanelle Johnson is one of the people well-placed to know. She's a principal at PwC, one of the "Big Four" accounting firms and consultancies. She's PwC's lead contact with the hotel sector's topmost execs.
Johnson's answer? Execs are worried about environmental reporting, which is becoming increasingly complex.
In a chat near her Washington, D.C., office, Johnson recently told me that European Union regulators are looking to require companies that operate in their countries to make more sustainability-related disclosures under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD, enacted in January. For the hotel sector, the new requirements mean that companies doing business in Europe will likely have to generate reports about the impact of their businesses on the environment. Large companies may have to publish the reports starting as soon as 2025. Jeanelle Johnson of PwC spoke at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in June 2023. Source: NYU Photo Bureau.The problem for hotel companies is that environmental reporting requirements are getting more complex.
As many hotel companies expand the detail of their carbon emissions reporting, the next frontier is to disclose so-called Scope 3 emissions — or ones from their franchisees, suppliers, and guests. Most hotel company emissions come from Scope 3, as Skift Research noted in March. See this chart below from the report Progress in Sustainability