Asia’s hospitality industry needs verifiable standards and better financial incentives if it’s to achieve sustainability by upgrading or building eco-friendly facilities and services, according to experts in the sector. 

More than half the region’s hotels and resorts are run independently by local entities that struggle to green their operations because of a lack of government incentives or oversight to hold them accountable, the experts said at Bloomberg’s Sustainable Business Summit in Singapore.

Asia’s tourism industry is a major driver of economic growth, contributing to nearly 9% of the region’s gross domestic product and employing 190 million people this year, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) and Oxford Economics. But its greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of GDP tied to tourism are higher than those in the rest of the world.

“In Asia, you need the obvious stuff like incentives, tax breaks, cheaper financing - things that will incentivise hotels to become more green or more sustainable,” said Rakesh Patel, chief executive officer of Alta Capital Real Estate, a private equity fund.

Speakers at Wednesday’s event also highlighted the need for a global body to certify hotels’ sustainability initiatives, and pointed to the European Union as a potential leader. The bloc operates an audit framework for the environmental impact of companies across various sectors.

The WTTC has a programme to help hotels go green by eliminating plastic bottles, limiting food waste and improving water and power efficiency, and verify that hotels have adopted the measures, said Liz Ortiguera, the organisation’s Asia managing director.

Across the region, governments are changing their approach to tourism as the impact of climate change hits, she said. Singapore, for example, has committed that 60% of the city-state’s room stock will attain internationally-recognised sustainability certification by next year. The major travel hub began tracking hotels’ emissions in 2023 and aims to eliminate them by 2050.

“Governments are going to focus less on the international visitor arrival numbers and focus more on jobs creation, domestic tourism, spend contributions to the community and find a way to balance that along with sustainable growth,” she said.

  - Bloomberg