In today’s rapidly evolving hospitality landscape, operators, managers and decision makers are realizing that achieving operational excellence requires more than just individual effort—it takes true teamwork. From controlling costs and enhancing the guest experience to maintaining strong community relationships, collaboration has become the cornerstone of success.
Driving sustainable hospitality forward through partnerships was the topic on hand during The Hospitality Show main stage panel earlier this week at the 2025 event in Denver.
Companies like Green Key Global and Ecolab, which operate sustainability certification programs, meanwhile, function like coaches who guide their hospitality clients to victory as they do what’s needed to attain these valuable and essential certifications. Emilio Tenuta, chief sustainability officer at Ecolab, was putting that sensibility into action while moderating the discussion.
“Sustainability has become a necessary business strategy that’s about smarter operations, stronger partnerships, and a sharper bottom line,” he explained. “We know each other, and the conversation is a great example of how the hospitality industry evolving so fast as hotels are trying to unlock opportunities to drive that exceptional guest experience while also driving operational efficiency, impact, and profitability all at the same time.”
Turning Initiatives and Ideas into Reality
Anick Levesque, Green Key Global managing director, regards sustainability-focused conversations between hospitality groups and prospective partners such as investors, local regulators and community groups when conducted thoughtfully, the ultimate outcome could potentially transcend such successes as lower costs, cleaner operations and happier guests.
“We believe strategic partnerships are integral to ensuring that operational excellence is achieved and sustained profitable growth is also realized,” she said. “They can range from technology partners to partnerships in responsible sourcing, partnerships or collaborations with community engagement organizations. By partnering with like-minded organizations, we take sustainability from being an elusive concept to actually driving impact for our guests, the different stakeholders, and, of course, the planet. We work across the various layers of the industry in order to establish standards, to promote those standards, and to execute the standards in a way that addresses the specific needs of the hotel years.”
Panelists Michael Chang, first vice president/ head of sustainability and resilience at Host Hotels & Resorts and Nicolas Tiziou, Choice Hotels International’s director of global sustainability, assert without hesitation that collaborations with their vendors, local businesses, and community organizations are not just the right thing to do. They constitute smart business strategies that streamline their operations and resonate with their customers.
“We have a corporate responsibility program where we have a 2050 vision of going beyond zero, reducing emissions, energy, water, and waste, which has cost impacts,” detailed Chang, noting Host Hotels & Resorts stretches 43,000 rooms across 80 upper upscale and luxury properties. “We are looking at our supply chain and making sure that they are trained in human rights and responsible sourcing policies and that we procure from kind of a diverse set of suppliers to increase our supply chain resilience. We also depend on our strategic partners from the brands and operators who operate our hotels, as they are the ones on the ground and using our investments, maintaining them, and making sure that they're driving operational excellence to our FF&E suppliers and our renovations and redevelopment.”
“The scope of my work covers everything from environmental topics to helping our hotels to save on water, energy and social topics such as community outreach,” explained Tiziou. “At Choice Hotels, the challenges we're working on are much bigger than ourselves, so it is essential to put our partnerships at the core of that. They are really critical because we can leverage synergies, innovations, and initiatives that drive really profitability but also making sure that we keep the added value in mind for our stakeholders.”
Real Life, Real Results
There was a consensus among moderator Tenuta and the panelests that Ecolab and Green Key Global drive better business, as stated by Levesque, meeting hotels on the sustainability journey where they are at, which is in turn achieved through these partnerships that end up being more than business opportunities. They are ultimately pathways to innovation and market differentiation.
“At Host, our strategy is holistic when we look at sustainability,” explained Chang, who adds that since 2019, they have expanded their LEED-certified buildings from seven to 21. “We have $5 billion in financing allocated for sustainability projects. This really helps to drive sustainability across the business and make it kind of a critical must-have, not a ‘nice-to-have.’ We have just under 200 strategic partners who we meet on a biannual basis to communicate a lot of expectations that we have within our program. It is an opportunity to talk about our ‘Green Building’ certification goals, our energy and water saving goals, and materials that we use within our renovation projects and how that can improve the health and wellness of our guest rooms.”
Chang’s points dovetail into Green Key’s mission, to make sustainability accessible, affordable, and profitable for the industry. Levesque explains Green Key has partnerships with a number of vendors providing sustainability-focused products and services and leverage them to support member properties. The organization works at the industry level, collaborating with TSCA, made up of nine leading certification bodies across the world.
“We work closely with them to ensure we have some form of alignment in our standards at a global level, recognizing that those standards need to be adapted to the needs of the North American market,” she said. “We want to make it as easy as possible for properties to reap the value of sustainability by working with Green Key.”
Tanuta then asked Tiziou about how Choice Hotels, which has 7,500 properties worldwide, had benefitted from better resource management, leading to better utilization of resources and substantial cost savings thanks to solid collaborations and partnerships. Tiziou emphasized that leveraging partnerships, including AI and tech partnerships, added a dimension of consistency to a large-scale operation.
“If you can’t measure (usage), you cannot manage it,” affirmed Tiziou. “We had to leverage our strong collaborations and partnerships with vendors, and (in one case), we worked with Schneider Electric. We equipped our hotels with a dashboard (they gave us) that helps the teams on the properties to automatically track their utility usage, calculate their greenhouse gas emissions, and flag anomalies. For example, there is a hidden leak under a swimming pool, but it may take time to spot it. The tool (from Schneider) measures and gets necessary stats so our hotels can benchmark themselves. And this has been our entry point better resource managing and therefore achieving savings. We also work with Ecolab, a company you may have heard of, and use its laundry detergents and other products that help us manage our water and energy usage and our hotels better manage their waste.”
Stay Responsible
“Given the business imperatives that you've all discussed with us today, I want to talk about the market demand shifts, especially around responsible lodging,” Tanuta said, turning to Chang to get his insight on corporate responsibility and different requirements depending on a property’s location, which Levesque touched on in her discussion about helping members navigate different regional laws and regulations.
“We’ve been disclosing our climate aspirations as well as everything around our corporate responsibility program for upwards of a decade,” said Chang. “We feel we’re ready to comply with state and local regulations on additional disclosures in this area. We use that as a benchmark for our entire portfolio as a best practice. We also partner with some of the best hotel brands and operators who are able to provide us with critical information on this as well. This data goes through third party assurance and the same financial controls as our financial data so that we have high confidence in putting that information out there and reporting that to state and local entities.”
Tanuta then asked Levesque about her thoughts on hospitality companies providing information for regulatory reporting, whether it be climate, water, packaging, or other issues affecting hotels and resorts. Her take on this was thinking global, but also acting local in terms of compliance and implementation of sound practices.
“We've talked about the demand for responsible lodging, and that demand is really at a global level,” she said. “It is in large part a business imperative for the majority of organizations, but the adoption of those sustainability actions and practices, they happen at the local level. It is important to understand what the regulators, investors, and guests are looking for, because it varies. And it varies from one region to another, which is why it's in partnerships (help hospitality companies) stay informed and understand what actions they can take to invest in sustainable practices.”