COLOGNE, GERMANY—HRS, the leading global corporate lodging and payment technology platform, announced that its award-winning Green Stay Initiative has now secured two prominent certifications. In late June, GUTCert, an accredited auditing organization in the European Union, conferred certification under the requirements of the International Standards Organization (ISO) 14067. The auditing process also verified that Green Stay complies with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standards. Both standards apply globally, giving multi-national corporate travel programs unrivaled assurance when they use HRS’ Green Stay Initiative to report, reduce and remove carbon emissions tied to corporate lodging.
HRS is the only travel-focused technology company to hold both certifications.
HRS’ Green Stay Initiative, launched in 2021, has achieved remarkable traction since its introduction. The majority of the top 20 global hotel chains participate today, as well as 600+ chains across more than 175 countries. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including prominent brands like Siemens, mandate use of the Green Stay Initiative for hotels seeking preferred supplier status in procurement exercises. HRS’ AI-infused approach to sustainable hotel programs—now continuously refining functions that analyze trends, drive future scenario models, and enhance operations in real time—has won awards on multiple continents.
The ISO certification, in conjunction with the GHGP accreditation, makes the Green Stay Initiative the superior solution for global travel programs as they focus on sustainable lodging practices and stricter corporate sustainability reporting for Scope 3 emissions. The provision of carbon footprint data—on a per-property basis—calculated by Green Stay’s verified methodology gives corporations the data they need to implement a sustainable procurement strategy, nudge travelers while booking and add business travel emissions data into corporate sustainability reporting.
Data Compliant with Numerous Standards
The data generated by the Green Stay Initiative’s reporting function is compliant with standards issued by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in the European Union. Green Stay’s detailed output also goes beyond the Global Business Travel Association’s recently released hotel sustainability standards.
With companies now facing financial penalties for insufficient evidence of credible emissions reduction in their reporting, the use of the Green Stay Initiative carries strong assurance to a company and/or hotel’s finance and ESG teams as they prepare official disclosure documents for auditors. Simply stated, unverified solutions based on average calculations are increasingly seen as greenwashing and no longer suffice for the majority of local and regional reporting requirements.
The benefits for hotels that participate in HRS’ Green Stay Initiative continue to unfold. Last year, hotels participating in Green Stay had a 31 percent higher success rate in corporate procurement bids. There are no fees for hotels to participate; they merely need to go through an assessment and share their sustainable attributes and metrics via streamlined AI automation HRS has developed. Beyond winning more corporate room nights, participating hotels also gain from:
- Embracing an ISO and GHGP-certified solution illustrates a hotel’s commitment to complying with current and future government-issued regulations. This positions a hotel as a leader ready to transparently accommodate the evolving needs of clients, particularly in eco-conscious markets.
- HRS’ comprehensive offering of online courses, case studies and videos—free for hoteliers via the company’s Green Stay Knowledge Hub—helps guide hotels on their sustainability journeys.
- Recurring reporting of sustainability metrics typically drives recurring investment in emission-reducing practices at the property level, leading to long-term operational savings while showcasing a hotel’s ongoing commitment to corporate clients.
“HRS’ Green Stay Initiative methodology passed our high level of tests regarding standards to collect, normalize and calculate the CO2 equivalent footprint of overnight stays,” said Florian Himmelstein, Deputy Head of Carbon Footprint at GUTCert. “Our organization commends HRS for its pioneering work on this scientifically based initiative, which helps companies around the world make the carbon footprint associated with their travel transparent and thus reduce it, as well as to comply with legal requirements.”
“As business travel volume accelerates across transient, meetings and longstay segments, companies are increasingly motivated to find a credible, efficient solution to drive more sustainable hotel programs,” said Tobias Ragge, CEO of HRS. “The ISO and GHGP certifications mark yet another point of confidence for corporations and hoteliers working with the Green Stay Initiative today, and further underscores the benefits of our platform-based approach to reduce and remove emissions while reporting accurately. I’ve long believed that sustainability is the mega-trend impacting business travel this decade. Accordingly, HRS will continue investing in AI-infused technologies and services that help facilitate the reduction of emissions across the managed travel ecosystem.”
