Sustainability in hospitality does not develop in a linear way. It typically grows from a combination of regulatory signals, guest expectations, market pressure, individual initiative, and — increasingly — investor or owner requirements.

The result is often a patchwork of good intentions and genuine effort, held together by informal knowledge and the motivation of specific individuals.

This can work reasonably well under stable conditions. But it creates predictable difficulties when conditions change:

• A certification body asks for documented sustainability priorities and a multi-year roadmap.
• A key staff member responsible for sustainability leaves the organisation.
• An investor or booking platform requests an ESG data summary.
• A new general manager wants to understand what sustainability commitments already exist.
• A regulatory review requires evidence that sustainability claims are substantiated.

In each of these situations, a hotel with a strategy and a hotel without one experience something fundamentally different.

The word “strategy” can suggest something abstract — a document produced by consultants, filled with frameworks and aspirational language that bears little relation to how a hotel actually operates.

In the context of hospitality sustainability, a useful strategy is almost the opposite of that.

Its purpose is to translate sustainability from a collection of individual initiatives into a coherent management approach. To do that, it typically needs to address five practical questions.

1. What matters most to this organisation?

Not every hotel faces the same sustainability challenges. A resort in an ecologically sensitive destination has different material issues than a city business hotel or a family-run alpine property. A strategy starts by identifying which environmental, social and governance topics are genuinely relevant — based on the organisation’s context, stakeholders and business model — rather than applying a generic list of sustainability topics.

2. Where do we stand today?

A strategy cannot define priorities without a clear-eyed view of the current situation. This does not require a large-scale audit. It requires an honest assessment of what already works, where the most significant gaps exist and which areas carry the greatest risk — operational, reputational or regulatory.

3. Who is responsible for what?

Sustainability governance is one of the most consistently underestimated elements of hospitality sustainability. When responsibility is informal, progress is fragile. When key individuals leave, momentum collapses. A strategy defines who owns sustainability priorities at leadership level, how operational responsibility is distributed across departments, and how sustainability connects to existing management structures.

4. What are we trying to achieve — and by when?

A strategy without targets is a set of intentions. Measurable objectives, defined KPIs and a realistic roadmap are what turn a sustainability strategy into a management tool. The targets should be specific enough to drive decisions, but realistic enough to be embedded in operational planning cycles.

5. How does sustainability connect to operations?

The most important function of a strategy is to connect sustainability priorities to the way the hotel actually operates — purchasing decisions, staff responsibilities, supplier relationships, guest communications, energy management, building maintenance and investment planning. A strategy that exists only as a document, disconnected from operational processes, will not produce results.

Organisational continuity

In many hotels, sustainability is effectively carried by one or two people. When those people leave, take on different roles, or become unavailable, sustainability momentum can stall almost immediately.

A strategy embeds sustainability into the organisational structure rather than the knowledge of individuals. Responsibilities, processes and targets are documented. A new general manager, operations director or sustainability contact can understand what has been committed to, what is currently in progress and what comes next — without reconstructing everything from scratch.

A mid-size hotel group was preparing to accelerate its sustainability programme. The plan included new certifications for several properties, enhanced sustainability communication and investment in building performance improvements.

Before committing resources, leadership wanted clarity on which actions would have the greatest impact across the portfolio — and which certifications would be most credible in their key markets.

The starting point was not implementation. It was a structured review of the group’s current sustainability position: what was already in place across properties, where material gaps existed, which certifications aligned with their business model and guest profile, and what a realistic multi-year roadmap would require in terms of governance, resources and operational change.

The result was not a list of sustainability actions. It was a strategy that gave leadership a clear basis for making decisions — about priorities, sequencing, investment and organisational responsibility.

Without that clarity, the risk was significant: investing in certifications that did not align with market requirements, implementing measures without the governance to sustain them, or creating communication that could not be credibly substantiated.

With a strategy in place, the group was able to direct effort and investment where it would produce measurable results — rather than where it was easiest or most visible.

It is worth being direct about a few things a sustainability strategy does not need to be.

It does not need to be a long document covering every possible sustainability topic. It does not need to be developed by a large team over an extended period. It does not need to wait until a hotel is “ready” — whatever that means in practice.

A strategy can be proportionate to the size and complexity of the organisation. A family-run hotel with 30 rooms does not need the same strategy as a 200-room city hotel or a multi-property group. What it does need is the same underlying logic: clarity about what matters, who is responsible, what is being measured and what comes next.

A strategy also does not need to be perfect at the point of development. It is a management tool, not a commitment carved in stone. A good sustainability strategy should be reviewed and adapted as the organisation learns, as market requirements evolve, and as performance data becomes available.

The goal is not a perfect document. The goal is a working system that helps the organisation make better decisions about sustainability over time. This is precisely where sustainability strategy development connects directly to operational implementation and continuous improvement.

The value of a sustainability strategy depends largely on when in the organisation’s sustainability journey it is developed.

For hotels at the beginning of a more structured approach, a strategy prevents a familiar problem: implementing actions in sequence without a clear picture of how they relate to each other, which ones are most relevant, and whether the overall direction is coherent.

For hotels that already have significant sustainability activity in place, a strategy provides something equally valuable: a structured framework for reviewing what has been built, identifying gaps that have been overlooked, clarifying responsibilities that have become informal, and establishing a basis for credible external communication.

For hotel groups managing sustainability across multiple properties, a strategy at group level is the foundation for consistent implementation. Without it, sustainability becomes a local initiative at each property — valuable, but difficult to coordinate, report or scale.

In each case, the underlying question is the same: does the organisation have a clear, shared understanding of what sustainability means for this business, what it is trying to achieve, and how it will get there?

If the answer is unclear, or if different people within the same organisation would give different answers, that is usually where a sustainability strategy delivers the most immediate value.

Sustainability measures are the visible part of what a hotel does. A sustainability strategy is what determines whether those measures are the right ones, are implemented consistently, and produce results that can be demonstrated.

Hotels that have built strong sustainability programmes over time typically share one characteristic: at some point, they moved from accumulating measures to building a management system. They defined priorities. They assigned responsibilities. They set targets. They connected sustainability to the way the business operates.

That transition — from sustainability as a collection of actions to sustainability as a management approach — is what a strategy makes possible.

Sustainability is not a project that ends when measures are implemented. It is a way of managing an organisation that improves over time — if there is a strategy to guide it.