This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.
Sustainability in hospitality is moving beyond a standalone set of environmental commitments. Skift Research found that accommodations are the trip category where U.S. travelers are most likely to pay more for a sustainable option, while hotel websites are where they most often encounter sustainability messaging.
For Accor, sustainability is not a new priority. Building on a 40-year track record of environmental and social commitments, the Group’s refreshed 2026-2030 sustainability roadmap, Hosting Change, connects sustainability more directly with hotel performance across four areas: future-proof operations, guest experience, talent, and the broader ecosystem. The goal is to create shared value while giving individual regions, brands, owners, and hotels room to adapt the strategy to their local needs.
The roadmap also reflects sustainability’s growing role in Accor’s corporate leadership. Coline Pont, who returned to Accor in 2025 as chief sustainability officer and joined the Group Management Board, brings sustainability into the Group’s highest-level management discussions, reinforcing its relevance to business strategy, hotel owners, and investors.
“The roadmap was designed to make it easy to answer very practical questions,” Pont said. “What does this mean for my hotel, for my team, for my day-to-day decisions?” Skift Studio spoke with her about how Hosting Change was developed, the business case behind it, and how Accor is trying to turn four decades of sustainability commitments into action across more than 5,800 hotels.
Skift Studio: What’s new about Hosting Change?
Coline Pont: It’s not a “start from scratch” program. It’s about building on what already exists and taking it several steps further. The logic is simple: Hosting is what we do every day. Change is what we have to manage. Hosting Change is designed to make them work hand in hand to create shared value.
A hotel performs better when it uses resources wisely, keeps great people, delivers a memorable stay, and stays connected to its community. Our business objectives and sustainability objectives are not competing priorities. They reinforce each other.
The program focuses on carbon, food waste, diversity and inclusion, and eco-certification, alongside four “Extra Miles”: reducing energy, water, and waste; making plant-forward food desirable; opening employment pathways; and supporting people affected by violence.
How do you create a common framework that works across such a diverse network?
Operating more than 5,800 hotels across 110 countries and with a portfolio of more than 45 brands, the challenge is making the strategy work on the ground for very different owners, brands, and markets. A thing that works in one hotel is interesting. A thing that works in five thousand changes the business.
Each region and brand has autonomy to go further on the issues that matter most in its context. In water-stressed regions, that autonomy translates into practical solutions. Mövenpick Petra converted 90% of its rooms from bathtubs to walk-in showers, while Raffles Bali built a dual-source water system that returns 97% of the water it draws back to the land. We also created a Sustainability Owners Advisory Board, bringing together owners who represent around 50% of our network.
What is the strongest business case for owners to invest in sustainability?
Owners face real pressure: rising energy costs, corporate clients with their own ESG targets, and investors who price sustainability into asset valuations. The business case now sits in their P&L every quarter.
The first lever is resource efficiency. Energy and water represent about 7% of a hotel’s annual operating costs. In 2025, we cut water intensity by 5.2%. The second is commercial performance. More than 73% of our largest corporate clients require ESG criteria when selecting hotel partners. The third is long-term asset value. Owners who invest today aren’t just cutting costs. They’re protecting what they own.
How are guest expectations shaping the strategy?
Guests care, but sustainability rarely wins on its own against comfort, price, and location. So we focus on embedding sustainability into the quality of the experience.
Single-use plastics are a good example. We began phasing them out in 2019, formalized a groupwide commitment in 2020, and have since removed more than 50 types across the network.
We found that the replacements often became more thoughtful and more local. What could have looked like a downgrade turned out to be an improvement, and the backlash we braced for never came.
Food is another opportunity. It represents 17% of our carbon footprint. Our commitment to 35% plant-forward dishes by 2030 keeps meat on the menu, but makes more sustainable choices part of an offer guests choose because the food tastes good.
Hosting Change puts a strong focus on talent. In an industry that runs on people, what does it really mean to “empower” a workforce as vast and diverse as Accor’s?
Hospitality is fundamentally a human industry. You can have the most beautiful hotel in the world, but if the people inside it don’t feel valued, the experience falls flat. Empowering talent is probably one of the most complex and exciting challenges we face. It has three dimensions for us.
The first is making sure every single Heartist [Accor’s term for its employees] works in a safe, fair, and dignified environment. Human rights are the non-negotiable foundation on which everything else is built.
The second is making sure everyone has the knowledge and tools to contribute to our sustainability transition in their daily work. That’s why we’ve rolled out our School for Change program to Heartists across the network since 2022, training them to integrate sustainability into their daily on-the-job decisions.
The third dimension is creating real pathways for growth and belonging. Diverse teams perform better: 41% of our roles above the vice president level are held by women, and we intend to keep pushing that further.
And then there is what we call our Extra Mile on talent, which I am personally passionate about. We are reaching beyond our own walls to open pathways to employment for people facing barriers. Through partnerships with NGOs, we offer training, mentorship, and experiences to discover hotels.
By 2030, we are committed to certifying 20,000 people through this Social Mobility program. It does two things at once: creates real social impact and builds a more diverse, motivated workforce for our industry.
Beyond its own operations, Hosting Change extends to suppliers, local communities, and people at risk. Why is it important for a hotel group to look beyond its own walls, and where can hospitality have the greatest positive impact?
Our hotels don’t stand alone. They depend on suppliers, they’re rooted in neighborhoods, and they’re part of communities. We work alongside our suppliers, providing tools, frameworks, and guidance to strengthen their own sustainability performance.
Today, 98% of our nominated suppliers are certified through EcoVadis, and in 2025, we won the World Sustainable Travel and Hospitality Award for our supply chain decarbonization program.
On communities, every property we operate is part of a local ecosystem. Our presence creates lasting value through local partnerships, employment, cultural heritage, and support for local businesses. Last year, 25,000 people benefited from solidarity projects, and through our ALL loyalty program, our members donated 9 million points to social and environmental causes.
Then there’s our Extra Mile initiative: 1,000 hotels opening their doors to people fleeing gender-based violence by 2030. Thirty percent of women aged 15 and older have experienced violence at least once in their lifetime. With thousands of hotels embedded in communities across the globe, we have the infrastructure, the reach, and the responsibility to provide safe shelter when it’s needed most. That’s what responsible hospitality means to us.
We’ve talked a lot about Accor’s own initiatives. How important is it for the wider hospitality industry to work together on sustainability?
The problems are too systemic for any one company to solve alone. I see it every time sustainability leaders from competing hotel groups sit down and openly discuss what’s working and what isn’t.
In December 2026, we’re hosting the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance Summit, bringing together an organization that represents more than 66,000 hotels and 8 million rooms.
Being first in the race for sustainability isn’t the point. What matters is whether the rest of the industry follows. That’s why our Sustainability Innovation Program is designed to share what works. By 2030, our goal is to pilot and scale 100 resource-saving solutions across our network, then make successful solutions available to the wider hospitality industry.
This year’s focus is water, and we’ll share what we’ve learned at the UN Water Conference. We’ll also participate in COP31, with senior leadership representing Accor.
By 2030, what would success look like?
By 2030, I want all of our brands to be recognized for their sustainability efforts and increasingly chosen because of them.
A traveler who books an Ibis, a Novotel, a Sofitel, or a Raffles should know that responsible choices come with the stay, from the water saved to the food enjoyed. Corporate clients are already moving in that direction, and leisure travelers are starting to follow.
When guests choose our hotels because of these efforts, our hotel owners see it in their bookings, and talented people have one more reason to join us. That is the success and virtuous circle we are building toward.
For more on Accor’s Hosting Change sustainability roadmap, click here.
This sponsored content was created collaboratively by Accor and Skift Studio.
