carbon data
FR DE EN
Let's talk

All articles

Tourism and sustainability: from claims to figures

27 October 2026

Hotels, meeting venues, event organisers: over the past two years, booking platforms, corporate buyers and the law have changed what they expect on sustainability. A declared commitment is no longer enough. All three want proof, and that proof starts with a measurement. Here are the figures, followed by an example: hotels in Geneva.

Travellers book certified

In Booking.com’s annual survey published in April 2026 (32,500 travellers, 35 markets), 36% of respondents plan to stay this year in accommodation that holds a sustainability certification. In 2025, 100 million room nights were booked on the platform in properties certified by a third party.

The word that matters is “certified”. 37% of respondents do not trust options merely labelled “more sustainable”. Booking.com drew the conclusion in March 2024, after the Dutch competition authority intervened: its own Travel Sustainable badge, based on self-declaration, was withdrawn. The platform now shows only certifications issued by a third-party body. They cover 28,000 properties, 22% more than a year earlier.

Corporate buyers want data

Companies that buy room nights and meetings are not looking for a logo. According to the GBTA Foundation, 92% of business travel buyers rate sustainability a priority, 65% want emissions data measured to common standards and comparable from one hotel to the next, and 9% already require their staff to use sustainable accommodation.

International organisations go further. Since January 2025, UNDP’s sustainable procurement guideline for hospitality and conference services asks suppliers for an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions and a 2% reduction in energy consumption per year.

The law sets a trajectory

The Federal Act on Climate Protection and Innovation has been in force since 1 January 2025. It sets a net zero target for Switzerland in 2050 and expects every company to contribute. Cantons add their own rules. Geneva aims to cut its emissions by 60% by 2030 compared with 1990. Its energy law requires an audit and a target agreement from sites using more than 0.5 GWh of electricity or 5 GWh of heat a year, and a renovation of buildings whose heating index exceeds 222 kWh/m² a year.

Measurement before the label

These three demands have one thing in common. The traveller wants a label: it rests on an audit. The company wants figures: they rest on a measurement. The law wants a trajectory: it starts from an inventory. In all three cases the starting point is the same, a verifiable figure specific to the property, which can be shown to an auditor, a buyer or an authority.

The example of Geneva’s hotels

Swisstainable is the national sustainability programme of Swiss tourism. It sits alongside international labels such as Green Key, Green Globe, EarthCheck, ibex fairstay and ISO 14001. Its Level III – leading rests on a full external certification, the kind that platforms display.

We cross-referenced the Geneva cantonal business register with the list of Swisstainable establishments published by Switzerland Tourism, as of October 2026. Of 219 entities classed as hotels in the register, 56 take part in the programme: 29 at Level I – committed, 6 at Level II – engaged and 21 at Level III – leading. In other words, one Geneva hotel in four has made a public commitment, and one in ten holds the certification its guests can see when booking. Level II – engaged and then Level III – leading are the path that makes this commitment verifiable.

A note on method. The 219 entities correspond to 190 addresses; the cantonal statistics office counts 125 hotels in the statistical sense, because it excludes establishments with fewer than ten beds and counts companies sharing a site only once. The 56 participating establishments are counted after deduplicating company names. Platforms display the third-party certifications on which Level III – leading rests, not the level itself.

What this changes for a property

The order of operations is reversed. Yesterday, you chose a label and then gathered the documents. Today, measurement comes first, because it serves everything else: the platform listing, the tender response, the annual report to the Global Compact, the target agreement with the canton and, when the time comes, the certification file. That is where we start with every property: our services.

Sources

All articles