HOTELS & HOSPITALITY

Advito Launches Hotel Sustainability Index to Transform Corporate Travel Decisions

GLO

19 December 2025

Advito, the sustainability and corporate travel consulting arm of BCD Travel, has unveiled a new Hotel Sustainability Index (HSI)—a quantitative scoring framework designed to help corporate travel buyers objectively evaluate hotels’ environmental performance and embed sustainability into sourcing decisions. The launch reflects growing corporate demand for reliable sustainability data and accountability as companies expand environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments.

Bringing Accountability and Transparency to Hotel Sustainability

Corporate travel managers have long struggled to assess the environmental impacts of hotel stays. Unlike flight emissions—which benefit from standardized reporting frameworks and widely adopted tools—comparable sustainability data for hotels has been inconsistent or lacking. The new Hotel Sustainability Index aims to fill that gap by assigning properties a composite score out of 100 based on six core environmental performance metrics:

• Carbon (CO₂) emissions

• Water consumption

• Energy use

• Eco-certifications

• Transparency (reporting disclosure)

• Other sustainability initiatives, such as recycling programs and reductions in single-use plastics

This holistic approach goes beyond traditional hotel ratings—which often prioritize amenities, service, and luxury—to measure concrete sustainability performance criteria. The HSI combines absolute and relative scoring, enabling fair comparisons across regions with different energy grids, water systems, and infrastructure constraints.

Responding to Corporate Demand for Better ESG Tools

Advito’s development of the HSI comes as more than three-quarters of corporate travel buyers now incorporate sustainability goals into their travel policies and seek tools that allow them to align travel spend with broader climate commitments.

“Travel buyers have been asking for a better way to understand and measure hotel sustainability,” said Julien Etchanchu, Global Lead for Advito’s sustainability practice. “With the HSI, we’re giving our clients an authoritative tool based on actual hotel data and real-world conditions.”

By rewarding hotels that provide detailed environmental data with additional transparency points, the index encourages participation and disclosure—creating a virtuous cycle that improves benchmarking quality and drives competition on environmental performance.

Industry Standards and Broader Context

The HSI’s methodology leverages established measurement frameworks, including widely accepted standards for calculating hotel carbon footprints, alongside Advito’s own ISO-certified carbon measurement systems.

These frameworks situate the HSI within broader sustainability measurement efforts across the travel and hospitality industry. While hotel eco-certification programs remain important indicators of environmental commitment, they often vary in scope and adoption. The HSI’s standardized scoring adds a comparable, data-driven layer that allows corporate buyers to evaluate performance beyond labels alone.

Embedding Sustainability Into Procurement and Travel Behaviour

Advito is already integrating the HSI into its proprietary sourcing platform, allowing companies to include sustainability scores directly within hotel request-for-proposal (RFP) processes alongside traditional criteria such as price, location, and service quality. This signals a shift toward embedding sustainability directly into procurement workflows rather than treating it as a secondary consideration.

Looking ahead, Advito plans to extend the HSI’s application to business travelers themselves. Through point-of-sale nudging, travelers could soon see sustainability scores during the booking process, helping guide choices toward more environmentally responsible options.

Why This Matters for Corporate Travel

The launch of the Hotel Sustainability Index reflects a broader shift in how sustainability is measured and acted upon within corporate travel programs:

• Data-driven decision-making: The HSI provides objective, comparable sustainability data rather than relying on marketing claims.

• Increased accountability: Hotels that regularly report environmental metrics stand to score higher, incentivizing transparency and improvement.

• Alignment with ESG commitments: Quantifiable insights support more rigorous corporate climate reporting and goal-setting.

• Empowered travelers: Visibility into sustainability performance at booking can influence behavior and reinforce corporate values.

Advito’s Hotel Sustainability Index represents a meaningful advancement in corporate travel sustainability measurement. By delivering a standardized, transparent, and data-rich scoring framework, the HSI enables travel managers to factor environmental performance into hotel sourcing decisions with greater confidence. As more companies integrate ESG criteria into procurement and reporting processes, tools like the HSI are likely to become essential for aligning travel strategies with climate goals—and for encouraging hotels to improve sustainability performance at scale.

The Global Loyalty Organisation Take

From a Global Loyalty Organisation perspective, Advito’s Hotel Sustainability Index marks an important inflection point in how sustainability, loyalty, and corporate travel economics intersect.

First, the launch accelerates the shift from sustainability as a values statement to sustainability as a decision currency. By translating environmental performance into a standardized, quantitative score, Advito makes sustainability comparable, rankable, and actionable—conditions loyalty ecosystems require to influence behavior at scale. What can be scored can be rewarded, weighted, or deprioritized within loyalty and procurement systems.

Second, the Index introduces a new lever for loyalty differentiation beyond price and points. Corporate loyalty programs—across hotel brands, travel management companies, and enterprise platforms—have historically struggled to operationalize ESG goals without adding friction. A normalized sustainability score enables experimentation with incentive design, including preferred hotel tiers, bonus points, recognition benefits, or behavioral nudges tied to environmental performance rather than brand affiliation alone. Over time, this could reshape preferred-supplier dynamics in favor of hotels investing in measurable outcomes.

Third, the framework reinforces the reality that data transparency is becoming a prerequisite for participation in high-value loyalty ecosystems. Hotels willing to disclose energy, water, and emissions data are effectively buying access to future demand pools—corporate travelers, ESG-driven enterprises, and loyalty members who increasingly expect alignment between values and purchasing behavior. Properties that cannot or will not provide verifiable data risk long-term disadvantage, regardless of brand strength.

Finally, from a loyalty lens, this launch subtly repositions loyalty from a marketing function to a governance and demand-shaping tool. As sustainability scores are embedded into sourcing platforms and booking paths, loyalty mechanisms become a way to steer demand toward outcomes that benefit corporations, travelers, and the environment simultaneously. This elevates loyalty from a post-transaction reward to a pre-transaction decision framework.

Bottom line from a loyalty perspective:
Advito’s Hotel Sustainability Index is not just a sourcing tool—it is an enabling layer for the next generation of loyalty strategy, where environmental performance becomes a measurable input into preference, recognition, and long-term customer value creation.

About Advito

Advito is the consulting division of BCD Travel specializing in transforming corporate travel programs. Its intelligence-driven framework manages supplier spend and traveler behavior dynamically, ensuring travel programs run smoothly and efficiently, while meeting the needs of all stakeholders. With smart analytics, unique supplier strategies, and integrated traveler engagement, Advito elevates travel programs to new heights of sustainability, savings, and satisfaction. Advito is proud to be the first travel consultancy to develop its own ISO certified carbon reporting methodology, GATE4, and to create a dedicated practice area for sustainable business travel. 

Source: Advito