Several large hotel brand companies in the United States, as well as hotel ownership groups, have now formally committed to require third-party sustainability certifications for their properties. These must be from an approved and generally known and respected nonprofit certification body like Audubon International. These companies have embarked on a sustainability transformation journey for their physical assets, along with program and employee behavior changes in their hotel operations. The goal is to positively impact team culture, their overall business, and the community. They deserve credit and recognition for showing such leadership for the hospitality asset class in commercial real estate.
Beyond this admirable commitment, there may loom a big and preventable risk–what I call a Virtual Audit conundrum.
How can this affect what happens “out in the field?” Allow me to put some needed context to the whole sustainability certification program process.
Getting Ready To Apply
If your hotel already has a plan to attain an Eco Certification in 2025, you are well ahead of the pack. Even a fast track to certification will take anywhere from 30-45 days to result in a certification, though in my experience, most take at least a few months. It all depends on how prepared you are to proceed.
What’s involved? How are certification applications scored, and how different can they be among approved certification bodies? I will try to answer these basics before addressing the Virtual Audit conundrum.
What Your Audit Will Include
In general terms, audits involve several core, science-based fundamentals –Waste Streams, Reuse and Recycle Programs, Energy Management, Water Management, and Indoor Air Quality for all built assets and property operations. This is not unique to hospitality and can be applied to any built asset. Then it’s all about the team, operating culture, and community engagement for stakeholders–what puts the “spirit of hospitality” in the Hotel Business.
For example, where does the Rooms department team member engage? Certainly, all operations sectors have big roles to play including Housekeeping, Front Office, and Guest Services. Food & Beverage has an equally large, and distinctively different, role in the sustainability engagement and ongoing delivery process. Human Resources is a big stakeholder, too, and should be engaged; any high-performing green program supports both retention and recruitment, along with better sustainability results in the communities where their employees live. General Managers get involved internally and externally in community engagement. Purchasing Leaders engage to help source available local and more sustainable products and related services. Directors of Engineering typically own the program from an executive leadership perspective.
By far the most advanced sustainability programs I engage with today are those led by green teams with active representation from every group, all working in harmony to assure a property’s successful operation. And from a pure ROI perspective–getting heads in beds–a Marketing and Sales team wants to promote engagement in sustainability and earn recognition for getting credibly certified. Meeting Planners include sustainability certifications as a filter in their group business solicitations. Everyone at the property level has a role to play in the sustainability journey, including becoming credentialed!
A less obvious yet significant stakeholder is the professional in Revenue Management. Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are a well-established business line in everyone’s mix of transient business today. Future guests interested in staying at properties with a solid sustainability record are looking for those in their OTA research and booking decisions. To enhance room bookings, Audubon International provides large, global OTAs data identifying our certified hotel and resort property members on a regular basis.
Destinations resorts offer other areas to assess in their quest for hospitality certification. Most properties have both significant natural environments as well as built hospitality operating assets. Audubon International is one of the only approved certification bodies globally that offers sustainability certification programs covering all built and natural landscape categories, including golf courses.
The path to sustainability certification by a third-party body is much smoother if such standards and criteria are already aligned with the operating culture for your property. A Green Hospitality Certification for your hotel or resort reinforces your brand reputation and spills into the guest experience. There are many other financial benefits, as well, including hard cost savings in energy, water, and food waste, and soft benefits in recruitment and retention and customer satisfaction. Getting certified helps support those efforts while also providing a recognized credential of high value to the traveling public.
Next Steps
Are you planning to get a sustainability certification in 2025, and if so, what’s involved? Besides the timing runway I mentioned, how does the process unfold? Here are some things that are generally involved no matter what third-party certification source you choose.
First, there’s an up-front charge which can range from nominal to quite expensive. For example, Audubon International membership only requires a one-time $500 enrollment fee, along with thefirst year’s annual dues payment, which will range from $500 – $1,000 based on your room key counts. We use a three-year recertification cycle, and all the information is available on our website: Green Lodging Program — Audubon International
The next step is earning certification and becoming an Audubon International Certified Green Hospitality Member.
After enrolling, you’ll receive a comprehensive designation application form to fill in and return. This will ultimately lead to a decision on the qualification to become certified, and at what level. Audubon International currently offers Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Certifications.
Such processes are generally consistent across all credible mainstream certification bodies that have been in the industry for at least 10 years–in our case, almost 40 years as a nonprofit, mission-driven organization. Audubon International started in 1987 as a certification body; its longest-tenured hospitality member joined in 1993 and has maintained Green Lodging Certification for more than 30 years.
“Beware the Virtual Audit .”
Here is where it can get wonky, and in fact dangerous:Any temptation to choose a certification body that offers virtual audits as a cost-saving measure is, frankly, being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Green certification resulting from comprehensive on-site visits is truly pivotal in demonstrating a property’s commitment to environmental responsibility to a global audience. Any compromise in a process’s integrity could have widespread repercussions for your property; it’s best to avoid being slammed within your industry, and indeed in the media, for “settling” for a Virtual Audit.
Just last year Booking.com, a global leader in the online booking space, averted such a crisis; according to Skift, they tagged some 100,000 out of 400,000 listed properties as “sustainable” without published standards criteria, which ran into regulatory issues and a social media wall of resistance. 1
This event provided a great example as well as a stark warning to any property claiming sustainability best practices without a valid or thorough onsite audit. There are simply too many key areas to assess and score for any virtual audit to be credible.
A study published by the Journal of Environmental Management highlights that in-person audits uncover 30% more discrepancies compared to remote evaluations in operational assessments, underscoring the gaps inherent in virtual processes.2
A report by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) warns that virtual-only audits risk undermining the credibility of certifications, making it harder for stakeholders to differentiate genuinely sustainable properties from those engaging in greenwashing. 3
Whether the property is genuine in its sustainability practices or not, the perception of a virtual audit that doesn’t properly cover every critical program element (Community Stakeholders, Procurement, Energy, Water, Air Quality, and Outdoor Natural Resources) can easily lead to the impression that a certification is less than thorough and complete.
In today’s digital age, any perceived misstep in sustainability practices can quickly go viral on social media platforms like X or Instagram. Negative publicity stemming from accusations of greenwashing or insufficient certification standards can cause long-lasting damage to a property’s reputation. As Deloitte highlights, the amplification of such incidents on social media heightens the importance of robust and transparent certification processes. 4
I’m proud to share that Audubon International does not offer virtual audits. Our specialists are onsite to audit and coach teams wherever we are engaged–in all, we have issued certifications in 37 countries and adding more each year.
Travel consumers are acutely aware of Green Washing in the marketplace. Leaders in today’s green lodging and hospitality movement are authentically focused on sustainability, so “beware the virtual audit.”
Citations:
Booking.com Ends ‘Possibly Misleading’ Sustainability Program
Journal of Environmental Management*: “Comparative Effectiveness of On-Site vs. Virtual Audits in Sustainability Certification,” 2021.
Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC): “Risks of Greenwashing in Virtual Audits,” 2023.
Deloitte: “Reputational Risks and Social Media in Sustainability Audits,” 2023.