The EU Green Claims Directive and small hotels

Large corporate hotels and franchise groups have the resources to employ lawyers and consultants to ensure that their marketing claims do not violate the EU Green Claims Directive. It is a more significant challenge for small and boutique hotels. Their size, turnover, and operating margin make hiring expertise difficult and, for many, impossible. These are also the accommodation properties that need to differentiate themselves in the marketplace to emphasise their environmental principles and their connections with their neighbours, sourcing locally produced food and encouraging guests to purchase local services and handicrafts. 

The details of the Green Claims Directive are still being developed, but it is reasonable to expect that they will be particularly challenging for individual hotels. Horwath HTL published data on hotel chain penetration across Europe in 2019, and it is clear that a large majority of hotels across Europe are not in corporate groups, and this is also the case across the world where the Green Claims Directive will also have an impact. 

As I argued on Travel Tomorrow last week, the EU Green Claims Directive will empower consumers to hold those who are making false claims and misselling accountable, and this is arguably long overdue. Accommodation providers have relied on green certification to attract the growing segment of the market that cares about the environmental and social impacts of the places they choose to stay. The problem with certification is that it is opaque. You cannot, as a consumer, choose in a drought area the hotel with the best performance on water consumption per bed. It’s worse when you check in to your certified hotel and discover that the towels you so carefully put back on the towel rail daily are routinely replaced with freshly laundered ones. The consumer has no effective means of redress as they have no contract with the certification agency. 

The Green Claims Directive is welcome, very welcome. The danger is unintended consequences. The danger is green hushing as managers who are taking steps to make their accommodation more sustainable don’t mention it for fear of misselling claims. If the Green Claims Directive causes greenhushing, it will reduce and probably remove one of the incentives for action by hotels: market advantage. 

I was delighted to see yesterday that Sarah Habsburg, a former student of mine on the Master’s in Responsible Tourism Management, has launched a new short professional course for hotel managers on Marketing Sustainability “a comprehensive, self-paced course designed specifically for independent hotels, lodges, and B&Bs.” Sarah has some great free resources on her website.

The new course provides a holistic approach to Sustainability Marketing:

As Sarah points out “Sustainability is complex, but this course breaks it down into actionable steps, ensuring hotel owners can move forward confidently. It’s designed to empower businesses to become leaders in sustainability, attract the right guests and staff, and build stronger reputations that will help protect against future challenges.”

Successful and regulation-safe action on sustainability in hotels requires that sustainability is embedded across the hotel and that the staff does not negate the marketing claims.