Marketing and Comms
Hilton Worldwide Saves $250 Million from Energy Efficiency in 4 Years

Hilton Worldwide has saved nearly a quarter of a billion dollars from energy efficiency projects over the past 4 years, according to its 2012-2013 corporate responsibility report.

Since 2009, the hospitality company reduced energy use by 12.2 percent and carbon output by 12.8 percent. In the U.S., Hilton purchased more than 450 million kilowatt hours of renewable power through December 31, 2012 — enough to meet 94 percent of the annual electricity use in its owned hotels in the United States.

The hospitality company achieved this largely due to “Living Sustainably,” a business imperative and a cornerstone of its Travel with Purpose program, which sets sustainability goals to reduce energy consumption, carbon and waste output by 20 percent, and water use by 10 percent, by the end of 2013. To help carry out the plan, Hilton created LightStay, a proprietary system to measure, analyze and report on sustainability data. In 2010, LightStay helped the company save more than $74 million across its portfolio of 10 hotel brands.

In the report, Hilton also says it exceeded its five-year goal to reduce water consumption by 10 percent and waste output by 20 percent in 2012, one and two years ahead of schedule, respectively.

Hilton announced its waste reduction program, recently rebranded RePurpose, which has collected 270,000 pounds of soap — creating nearly one million new bars for countries in need; donated more than 20,000 pounds of food for food banks worldwide; and recycled 9,200 mattresses and box springs into new products.

At the SB '13 conference in June, Hilton discussed its partnership with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council to launch the Center for Sustainable Procurement (CSP) initiative, to help hospitality industry procurement professionals make informed purchasing decisions based on the best available sustainability information.

Hilton also joined with 22 hotel companies, along with the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), to create the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) 1.0, to calculate the carbon footprint of hotel stays and meetings.

In maintaining ISO 9001 certification for Quality Management Systems and ISO 14001 certification for Environmental Management Systems, Hilton became one of the first multi-national organizations to certify its entire system globally, achieving one of the largest-ever volume certifications of commercial buildings.

Hilton claims to be one of the first major multi-brand hospitality companies to make sustainability measurement a brand standard, equal in importance to quality, service and revenue. The company requires measurement and corrective action from all of its more than 4,000 hotels across 10 brands as well as performance toward sustainability goals. Each of its properties uses LightStay to track more than 200 indicators and measure sustainability progress year-on-year.