AccorHotels sets bold green goals as efficiency drive bears fruit

French group AccorHotels has outlined ambitious plans to improve sustainability over the next five years.

The hotel owner and operator also revealed that its current five-year programme had cut water consumption by 9%, energy use by 5.3% and carbon emissions by 6.2%.

Dubbed Planet 21, the new programme aims to reduce food waste across the group by 30% by 2020. It also specifies that any new hotels will be low carbon builds and that its existing stock will be retrofitted with energy efficiency measures.

However, the new system will give local operators more leeway in setting their own objectives. They will have to achieve 16 mandatory actions to achieve bronze status, but can select which further actions to take should they wish to go over and above the set minimum. Accor said that approach should encourage ownership of CSR issues.

Group chairman and chief executive, Sébastien Bazin, praised staff efforts in hitting two thirds of the targets set out in its 2011-15 plan. Now he urged them to "scale up ambitions … to drive the change towards positive, more responsible and inventive hospitality, wherever we are."

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