With some major global tourism destinations, including Rome and Cape Town, already implementing water restriction measures, the hotel industry is working to structure its answer to water scarcity worldwide.
The International Tourism Partnership (ITP), a global organisation bringing together the world’s most powerful hotel companies representing over 30,000 properties worldwide, recently set a goal to embed water stewardship programmes across their hotel portfolios as a means of reducing the number of people affected by water scarcity.
Water can represent significant physical, health, regulative, and reputational risks for hotel companies: a single occupied room can consume up to 1,500 litres each day. The latest limits in Cape Town ask tourists to limit their use to a mere 50 litres a day. Research commissioned by ITP in 2018 highlights that
not only are most of the top hotel growth markets located in destinations with high water stress and an undervalued cost of water (e.g. China and Southeast Asia), but also the most water-intense hotel regions in the world have the highest risk of water cost increase.
Whilst internal programmes have largely focused on guest-facing initiatives such as incentives to reduce towel replacement or on-site water bottling, this common goal aims at focusing hotel companies’ efforts on improving overall water stewardship in the long term.
As a first step to encourage its members and the wider industry to follow this path, ITP published a report on water stewardship for hotel companies on World Water Day, 22 March 2018. This report will be helpful for any hotel group working on water issues by defining best practice on water stewardship
through 6 steps:
1. Understand your relationship with water
2. Set targets and create a plan of action
3. Manage water sustainably in your operations
4. Work with suppliers on water
5. Build resilience to extreme events and water shortages
6. Collaborate on sustainable water management
These steps align with the recommendation of WWF, CDP, the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, the Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the World Resources Institute (WRI) for companies to set context-based water targets, and show that this work already impacts sector-wide initiatives on water.
For the travel and tourism sector, water should be viewed as both a risk and opportunity. Water is the lifeline that flows through a hotel, cleans towels and sheets, flushes toilets, sustains landscaping, grows the food that guests order and facilitates all the cooking and cleaning that happens in kitchens.
Developed responsibly, tourism can drive positive environmental, social, and economic outcomes. On the other hand, tourism depends heavily on natural and cultural resources, and when managed poorly can deplete and degrade destinations.
To help shape what a responsible pathway looks like, WWF’s partnership with Hilton focuses on its commitment to adopt water stewardship throughout its value chain and, in regions where water stress is most acute, bring the company’s innovation and influence to drive positive change where it is most
needed. To deliver on this new water commitment, the partnership worked to set a water stewardship baseline.
By leveraging the WWF Water Risk Filter, Hilton was able to complete its first ever global water risk assessment for all their hotels. This assessment identified high water risk areas of which three, in the United States, South Africa and China, were selected initially for further investigation.
Water pilot programmes have been launched in all three geographies focused on training and empowering Hilton Team Members on the water risks their communities are facing. Building on strong operational management and existing water conservation efforts tracked through Hilton’s LightStay
platform, the new water stewardship pilot programmes will advance water saving best practices at properties, engage strategic suppliers beyond operational boundaries and initiate local community water projects.
WWF sees great potential in water stewardship efforts that embrace the entire value chain. Following the six steps laid out above will drive action internally, within supply chains and into communities and watersheds. No one company can solve the shared water challenges we face in basins around the world,
which is why partnership and collective action beyond the fenceline is key to securing water for people and nature.
We all need water, we share water, so let’s protect it by taking care of it together.
