Assessment of Sustainability Labels for Hotels

Credible labels can significantly increase consumer confidence, facilitating decisions for sustainable products and services and enabling real competition towards sustainability excellence. Against this background, the German Federal Environment Agency commissioned a project team led by Prof. Dr. Hannes Antonschmidt (Institute of Global Hospitality Research at the Dresden School of Management) with the further members BTE Tourismus- und Regionalberatung (Berlin), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (Vienna) and Greenance Nachhaltigkeit & Zukunft (Celle) to prepare an expert report. The report is to compare fifteen sustainability labels for hotel operations with regard to their level of ambition and derive a holistic evaluation system. As a result, a recommendation is to be formulated as to which labels are suitable for identifying sustainable hotels.

Contracting authority: German Environment Agency 

Project volume: 23.300 Euro net 

Period: November 2022 – early 2023