PARIS—AccorHotels has unveiled the results of Planet 21, its sustainable development program, and its commitments to new initiatives by 2020.
Sébastien Bazin, AccorHotels chairman & CEO, stated, “The commitment and energy demonstrated by our teams in deploying Planet 21 worldwide are both valuable levers for our sustainable performance. After five years, the results of the first phase of the plan are very encouraging. Today, we want to scale up our ambitions by banking on innovation and accountability. Planet 21 Season 2 must enable us to create wealth sustainably and curb our negative impacts through the mobilization of our employees, guests, partners and local communities. Our vision is to drive the change towards positive, more responsible and inventive hospitality, wherever we are.”
AccorHotels asked its customers for their environmental views and updated its environmental and socio-economic footprint to construct the new 5-year program. The 2016-2020 program reinforces some commitments already in place, such as curbing its environmental footprint, and identifies new objectives, such as F&B and the sustainable management of its property portfolio through HotelInvest.
Planet 21 [2016-2020] is structured into four areas of action enlisting its employees, customers, partners and local communities, and two priorities, namely food & beverage and buildings. Goals for 2020 include 30% less food waste, 100% low-carbon new buildings and renovations for owned and leased properties and 1,000 urban vegetable gardens in its hotels.
Charter 21, the in-house sustainable development management system for hoteliers, has been renamed Planet 21 in Action. According to the company, the new system aims higher and is more flexible, allowing each hotel to establish its own objectives and action plans. The baseline includes 16 mandatory actions, setting a first level of commitment (bronze status). To upgrade their status (to silver, gold and platinum), hotels can select the actions they wish to implement from a wider range of initiatives.
According to the company, from 2011-2015, Planet 21 delivered two-thirds of the program’s 21 objectives and over 90% of its hotels have joined the effort. In five years, water consumption has been cut by nearly 9%, energy consumption by 5.3% and carbon emissions by 6.2%. At the end of 2015, all AccorHotels were committed to protecting children from abuse (through its in-house awareness program, WATCH) and more than 4.5 million trees have been planted since 2009.