Our responsible business pillars
Shareholders are regularly engaging with us on governance issues and seeking data on energy efficiency. Our guests proactively ask for information about ways to make their stay as ecologically friendly as possible, for example, through recycling and measures to save water. Our team members also emphasise the importance of our ESG measures in their pulse survey feedback.
OUR PEOPLE, OUR PLACES, OUR PLANET
We have worked hard to collect data to allow us to be transparent and accountable about what we have done to become a more environmentally friendly business, to keep engaging with communities and to be an employer of choice. On energy and carbon emissions, a really exciting project that took place in 2022 was 'Save While You Sleep'. As part of our aim of setting science-based targets for achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040, we undertook a project with a specialist consultancy to monitor our energy use in hotels on a half-hourly basis. The data collected enabled us not only to set our baselines for our science-based targets, but immediately to make energy savings by identifying and resolving inefficiencies.
The 'Ecological' programme, including the 'Just a Drop' campaign to ensure access to clean water in the developing world, has been a great success.
We continue to prioritise being a responsible steward of the properties in our portfolio. In Croatia, where this includes extensive woodland, in which we are actively increasing biodiversity through planting trees.
LOOKING AHEAD
We took the decision that 2022 was the right year to ensure that we are responding to all these stakeholder priorities in the best, most efficient manner. This began with undertaking a full double materiality assessment of our stakeholders’ ESG priorities. The results of this assessment form the basis of our new strategy.
We determined that, as a business, we were doing good work, but we could be better in communicating how our Responsible Business activities drove the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Our new strategy comprises targets to drive four areas of ESG performance, resting on a governance platform:
Our properties
The impact our hotels have on the environment through embedded carbon, energy usage and resource consumption.
People
Being an employer of choice through investing and developing our people, and promoting internally.
Local communities
Ensuring that we are contributing to society wherever our hotels are by creating value locally and being a responsible corporate citizen.
Supply chain
Looking at our impact in a global sense on the environment, human rights, labour conditions and embodied carbon through our supply chain.
Governance
Ensuring good governance and accountability to stakeholders in delivery of targets.
The strategy was approved by the Executive Leadership Team at the end of 2022 and the targets we are announcing were made official by Board approval on 1 March 2023. We look forward to reporting back on them in the next Annual Report and Accounts.