Hilton reveals lucrative sustainability savings

Hilton Worldwide, the global hospitality firm, has recouped $147m (£91m) in cumulative savings through its innovative sustainability programme, LightStay.

The hotel chain, which is active in 91 countries, introduced the measurement system in 2009 as part of a five-year pledge to significantly reduce its pollution, waste and resource usage.

By 2014, it plans to decrease its energy consumption, carbon emissions and waste output by 20% and its water consumption by 10%. And figures released last week show that it has met and exceeded its waste output reduction target two years ahead of schedule, boasting a 23.3% cut across its 3,900 properties.

Meanwhile, the remaining three pillars of its sustainability pledge remain on course to meet their 2014 targets, seeing major reductions in energy (9.7%), CO2 (10.9%) and water (7.5%) since LightStay was implemented in 2009.

This has led to Hilton Worldwide reclaiming £91m in cumulative savings.

“Sustainability is an increasing focus across all our brands and is critical to the operations of our business”, said Christopher J. Nassetta, Hilton Worldwide president and chief executive officer.

“LightStay provides us with a global platform to respond to the challenges of managing natural resource constraints, and Hilton Worldwide is dedicated to empowering our property owners and operators with tools that improve economic and sustainability performance at all levels of our company.”

Full implementation of the LightStay programme across all Hilton properties was finalised last year, with the hotel giant’s sustainability scheme now active in 450m square feet worth of buildings – an amount, it says, “greater than all the office spaces in New York City and ten times all hotel rooms in Las Vegas”.

An Osmosis Investment Management study last week showed that sustainable companies financially outshine those that don’t deem resource efficiency as integral to their business strategies.

Firms that use less energy and water and produce less waste “tend to produce higher investment returns” for investors, it was revealed.

And the savings displayed by Hilton are further proof that running a sustainable business is not only good for the environment and resources, but also for profits.

Further reading:

Investments in resource-efficient firms shown to outperform competition

Analysis shows the ‘superior performance’ for sustainable investment

Investing sustainably is a ‘clear win’ says study