Meliá Hotels International wants to continue to deepen its commitment to sustainability, a strategic area that must be integrated into all aspects of the business and in all the geographies where we are present, currently more than 40 countries on four continents. To certify the compliance of its hotels, Meliá has relied on Ecostars, an internationally recognized certification that evaluates and “rewards” sustainable practices in the hotel industry.
Ecostars assesses the sustainability of hotels using a rating system that considers a variety of factors related to environmental management and energy efficiency, through criteria such as energy consumption and green energy, water management, waste management, carbon emissions and sustainable purchasing. The evaluation process for a hotel requires having all the consumption data by type or input and being within the parameters that Ecostars has defined as efficient hotels. Under these requirements, Meliá still has some hotels pending certification and is working to continue optimizing the process and continuously increasing the number of certified hotels.
Sustainability certifications are now essential to give visibility to sustainability in the marketing of hotels, as the main online travel platforms and the main tour operators highlight hotels that demonstrate sustainable practices. In this way, as stated by Gabriel Escarrer, President and CEO of Meliá, “having an evaluation as solid as Ecostars in our entire portfolio of property, rental and management, strengthens not only our reputation, but also directly our business results, since, as demonstrated by a recent study carried out by Booking.com, a visible positioning in sustainability is valued by customers and translates into an increase in reservations.”
For Meliá Hoteles International, another strong point of the Ecostars certification is its global nature, as it is used and recognized throughout the world. In fact, the portfolio evaluated by Ecostars is distributed geographically as follows: 160 hotels in Europe, 60 in the Americas, 40 in Asia and 10 in Africa.
The availability of the “360 ESG Management Hub” platform allows for a global view of the Company’s portfolio and a comparison with an external benchmark, providing hotels with a view both at group level and with other competing hotels, enriching knowledge in terms of sustainability and being able to identify good practices in the sector.