Is Green Key accreditation still relevant in an era of changing political tides?

Sustainability has been something that has been put at the forefront of company strategies and new developments for a number of years. This has led to the founding of a number of sustainability accreditations for businesses which wish to show off their hard work such as Green Key and B Corp. However, in 2025 political tides are turning and sustainability is becoming less of a priority for some businesses. Accreditations such as Green Key still have a number of benefits to hotels but can these accreditations survive as the agenda against such measures grows?

What are the benefits?

The benefits of achieving Green Key accreditation fall into two categories: marketing and cost-saving. On the marketing point, achieving Green Key accreditation can help attract a certain kind of traveller who cares about the environmental impact of their travel. It can be especially beneficial to higher-end hotels whose clientele have more ability to shop around and some may choose to prioritise greener hotels over others. These types of travellers are also more able to deal with any increased costs that may come with implementing sustainability measures.

Caroline Cartellieri, founder of C-Squared Consulting and someone with 25 years in hospitality leadership, believes that if done well, commitment to sustainability can help some hotels attract more or higher paying guests, particularly with corporate travellers who may have various targets to meet regarding sustainability. She also believes it can benefit a hotel with investors, as many of them may have certain ESG targets to hit.

It can also be a positive for hotels at the lower end of the scale. While many travellers at this price bracket are less worried about sustainability over the cost of a stay, there are some types of traveller, namely students, who care deeply about their environmental impact meaning it can be a way to set your hotel apart from other budget ones. Cartellieri also provides an example of a hotel which offered her money off of her stay if she agreed to forgo traditional housekeeping services. This is obviously good for the hotel as it cuts their costs and environmental footprint, but also good for the customer and could help attract more budget travellers.

The process of applying for Green Key can also benefit a hotel by introducing a number of cost-cutting measures. The application process itself requires hotels to have a deep understanding of their inner workings. For Green Key there are 13 criteria to meet including water, energy, food waste, washing and cleaning and staff involvement. By going through this process, many hotels are able to introduce environmentally friendly practices that will also cut costs. For example, implementing processes to cut food waste will save money, as every bit of food that goes in the bin is money wasted. Hotels can also save on energy costs by introducing more efficient lights, or making sure that electricity in rooms is shut off when guests leave.

However, the process does have some upfront costs involved. In England, the process is conducted through Keep Britain Tidy, and requires a £970 application fee and a £380 audit fee. This is before the costs of the changes required to meet the needs of the accreditation, something that will be more costly for existing hotels. Despite this, the long term benefits of these costs are clear.

Marco Salamon, general manager at Great Northern Hotel, explains: “We found the process incredibly helpful in identifying practical changes from reducing energy and water usage to managing waste better. These weren’t just good for the environment; they made financial sense, too. It helped us streamline some operations in ways we hadn’t considered before.”

He also says that the process had benefits for the hotel outside of the obvious. He believes that it brought his staff together by creating a sense of shared ownership and pride in the process and that mindset change had benefits across the hotel.

Is sustainability still important to hotels?

Cartellieri believes that many hotels are still not taking sustainability as seriously as they should. She explains that she still comes across many hotels that do not have mechanisms that turn off the electricity in rooms when guests leave for example. She also believes that this is only likely to grow with the rising agenda against net zero and the push for sustainability.

There is an argument to be made that many hotels were approaching sustainability with a tick box mentality, only engaging in it as it was seen as the right thing to do, rather than taking the steps because they believed it was the way forward. Now with political figures from the far-right calling into question the importance of these measures many hotels may choose to abandon them as they are no longer valued by politicians or investors. It also may cause guests to put less of an emphasis on sustainability meaning there is less of a reason for the hotels themselves to do so.

However, Cartellieri states that climate change cannot be ignored and with it comes immense pressure for hotels. “I can think of hotels that I know of that are in fairly mountainous areas that never had air conditioning, but now the summers get so hot, they’re suddenly having to install air conditioning. Air conditioning, as we know, is not necessarily a good thing to install, from an ESG point of view, because it costs electricity and it has all sorts of other side effects,” she says.

She explains that if she were to build a new hotel today she would put sustainability at the heart of everything, not only for moral reasons but for cost reasons too, future proofing the building in the immediate term can only benefit the long term. She gives the example of One Mayfair, which includes features such as moss walls, among other sustainability initiatives, as a hotel which has put sustainability at its core and will benefit from it in the long run.

Can tourism ever truly be sustainable?

While hotels can try their best to counteract the negative effects of tourism through sustainability efforts Cartellieri believes that mass tourism in its current form is unsustainable and must change if the industry is to survive.

“It is possible for the tourism industry to be a lot more sustainable than it is right now. I think we all agree that mass tourism the way it is today is not sustainable? If it costs me less to buy a ticket to fly from Stansted to Majorca than to take the train from my house to Stansted, then something is clearly wrong with the pricing because my train journey to Stansted is an awful lot more sustainable than my flight to Majorca,” she says.

Despite this, she thinks that there are a number of sustainable types of tourism currently happening that will continue to grow and eventually replace the current mass tourism. “You can find many destinations, whether they be camps or lodges, that are completely eco-friendly, highly sustainable and are not just there to be certified, but actually do what they say. They are treating the environment in a sustainable manner, and not just because it provides them with an economic benefit, but also because the owners or the operators or the investors really firmly believe it’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, I think that is still a minority, and until that becomes a majority, we’re still going to see fairly unsustainable practices in tourism globally.”

Overall it seems that the hotel industry will be forced to continue its sustainability mission whether politicians want it or not. Climate change is inescapable particularly in the tourism industry so it is a simple case of adapt or die.