How to build hotel sustainability criteria into procurement

When the US Environmental Protection Agency books a hotel or venue for a conference, its solicitation carries a sustainability checklist. The EPA Green Meetings and Conferences provision asks 16 yes-or-no questions about energy, water, linen changes, waste and food. Then it asks a 17th: "Is your facility prepared to document or demonstrate all of the claims you have made above?"

That 17th question is the one to copy into your own hotel RFP. Without it, each yes above it is a claim nobody has checked. An answer only counts once you've decided what proof you'll take, how many points it's worth and when you'll check it again.

Start with what you'll do with each RFP answer

The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, the industry body behind the main hotel carbon and water methods, has guidance for companies assessing hotels in their supply chain. It tells buyers to "request only relevant information which you will incorporate in your decision making and/or reporting."

So before you write a question, decide which of three jobs the answer does. It's a minimum that a hotel must meet to stay in the program, a score that moves a hotel up or down the ranking, or a reporting input that feeds your emissions inventory. A question that does none of the three costs the hotel time and gives you a spreadsheet column nobody reads.

Don't write the questions from scratch. The GBTA Foundation's free Sustainable Procurement Standards, first released in mid-2024, are a ready set of hotel sustainability questions. The Alliance made the same argument for GBTA's older RFP template: hotels already know the questions, so the answers come back better.

GBTA's 2026 hotel RFP template swaps its 2013 CSR questions for those standards, but it isn't expected until the 2028 sourcing season. Until then, add the questions you need from the standards to the template you use now. When the new template arrives, its client-specific module has room for 60 custom questions, which is where your own additions go.

Minimum criteria and scored criteria

Minimums are pass or fail, so keep them few and make each one something a hotel can prove with a document. A minimum that half your market can't meet empties your city list. One that every hotel meets by saying yes filters nothing.

Good minimums tend to be practices and management basics: the hotel measures its energy, water and carbon with a named method; it can give you the figures for a named 12-month period; any certification it claims is current and comes from an accredited body.

The Alliance warns that initiatives such as occupancy-based heating, cooling and lighting or energy-efficient kitchen appliances "may not be relevant for each hotel type or prevalent in specific markets." Keep questions like those out of the minimums.

Scored criteria are where measured performance goes, and they need a fair comparison. The Alliance puts it plainly: "it would be unrepresentative to compare the performance of a 5* hotel in Dubai to a 3* hotel in London."

Score each hotel's carbon and water figures against the benchmark for its own class and market. Which benchmark and which carbon figure to use, and how to read them, are covered in our guide to assessing hotel emissions data.

Set the weight before the responses arrive, and score it separately from rate and location. There's no industry standard for the number, but a few published tenders and rules show what some buyers have used.

Norway sets the highest floor we found. Since July 2026, its Public Procurement Act (in Norwegian) has required public buyers who weight their award criteria to give climate and environment at least 30% in purchases that must be advertised. The rule isn't specific to hotels, and it has exceptions, for example for purchases with an insignificant climate footprint.

Before that law, in 2024, the University of South-Eastern Norway tendered for hotel course and conference services and weighted price at 40%, environment at 30% and quality at 30%.

In the UK, Procurement Policy Note 002 tells central government bodies to give social value at least 10% of the total score. Social value there is broader than sustainability. It means the "social, economic or environmental benefit" a supplier adds while delivering the contract, so the 10% isn't a hotel sustainability weight.

Private buyers set their own. When PEFC, the forest certification body, tendered for a travel agency in 2025, it gave "sustainability and compliance" 10%, against 25% for cost.

Take 10 of 100 points as a worked example. Those 10 points can separate two hotels that both passed the minimums. They shouldn't be able to rescue a hotel that failed one.

The evidence to ask for, criterion by criterion

The table below names two measurement methods, the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) and the Hotel Water Measurement Initiative (HWMI). Both are free for any hotel to use. More than 18,000 hotels use HWMI and more than 30,000 use HCMI.

HCMI recommends an internal review and does not require external verification, so a hotel's carbon figure is self-reported unless the hotel tells you otherwise. Ask who checked it.

ENERGY STAR is US-only. A hotel needs a score of 75 or more, which means it performs better than at least 75% of similar US buildings on measured energy use. A licensed engineer or architect has to verify the application.

Certifications: check who issued them and when they expire

A certification question that only asks for the name tells you little. Ask for three things: the program, the body that certified the hotel, and the expiry date. A logo on the hotel's website gives you none of them.

The Global Sustainable Tourism Council sets a hotel standard and accredits the bodies that certify hotels against it. Its directory of certified hotels lists each one with its certification body and a "Current Cycle Expiration" date, so a claim takes a minute to check.

The directory is updated quarterly, so a hotel certified last month may not be on it yet. Ask for the certificate itself in that case. Certificates issued by GSTC-accredited bodies since September 1, 2026 carry a GSTC-issued QR code.

The World Travel & Tourism Council now draws its own line between a verified hotel and a certified one. The council's Hotel Sustainability Basics, which more than 7,000 hotels have implemented, have until now been verified rather than certified.

The council now advises hotels "verified against the Basics" to "temporarily avoid displaying the Basics verification logo or making associated claims" until they hold a certification from a GSTC-accredited body. A hotel that answered "Hotel Sustainability Basics" last year may give a different answer this year.

Which certifications are worth asking for is a separate question, and we'll compare them in a separate guide.

Send property questions to the hotel and policy questions to the chain

The Alliance's guidance splits its example questions by audience. Food options, recycling and community programs are run at the hotel, so the property answers them.

Climate targets, supplier codes of conduct, human rights due diligence and reporting to CDP or GRI are set at group or brand level, and the guidance says those questions "are best directed to corporate account managers to avoid confusion and increase the quality of these answers."

In practice that means one chain-level questionnaire per hotel group, answered once, and a shorter property section in each hotel's RFP response. You stop getting the same policy statement from every hotel in the chain, and the property section has room for the measured data. Our supplier questionnaire for climate data has the hotel questions to put in that property section.

What to write into the hotel agreement

An RFP answer describes the hotel on the day it answered. If the criteria are meant to hold for the contract year, the agreement needs to carry them. Four terms are worth adding:

1. A data date. The hotel sends its HCMI and HWMI figures, for a named 12-month period, by a fixed date each year. Pick the date so the figures arrive before your own reporting deadline.
2. Notice on a lapse. The hotel tells you within an agreed period if a certification it relied on expires, is suspended or isn't renewed.
3. Documents on request. The hotel provides the evidence behind any sustainability answer in its RFP response if you ask for it, which is EPA's 17th question turned into a term.
4. A consequence at renewal. A hotel that drops below a minimum during the year goes into next year's RFP as a non-qualifying response, unless it has fixed the gap.

In our view the fourth is the term most likely to get traded away, because nobody wants to raise it with the hotel that gave them the best rate. Without it, the other three only produce paperwork.

Re-check hotel sustainability evidence every year

Most of the evidence above expires on its own schedule, so put the re-check on the calendar alongside the rate negotiation. Each sourcing round, before you load the program:

• Confirm each certified hotel's expiry date in the certification body's or GSTC's directory.
• Check that each carbon figure is no more than 18 months old, the HCMI limit, and that the water figure covers a recent 12-month period.
• Ask whether the year was unusual. The Alliance tells a hotel to use its most recent normal period if energy use or occupancy moved by 20% or more, and to say so.
• Re-score against the current benchmark edition, which is published every year.
• Re-send the chain-level questionnaire. GBTA asks suppliers to update their answers to its standards every year.

For the airline side of the same program, our guide to sustainability criteria in a preferred airline program runs the same test: can the supplier be held to it in writing, and can you check it later. Wider policy questions, such as when to travel at all, are in our guide to building a sustainable travel policy.

Where Dyme fits

Your criteria only cover the nights your travelers book in the program. Dyme for Business marks in-policy and out-of-policy options before anyone books. Your company saves up to 35% with private rates (savings vary by hotel, date and inventory), and every booking helps fund solar that gives schools, clinics and their communities cheaper, cleaner electricity.