GHG Protocol
GHG Protocol for hospitality
How the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard applies to hotels (as suppliers) and corporate travel buyers (as Scope 3 reporters) — the boundary, the categories, the inventory standards.
Hotels disclose their own Scope 1, 2 and 3. Travel buyers report hotel-night emissions under their own Scope 3 Category 6. The two are linked but not double-counted because the Corporate Standard explicitly allows hotel-night emissions to appear in both inventories.
Two perspectives, one standard
The GHG Protocol applies to two distinct actors in the hospitality chain:
The hotel as a reporter. The hotel measures its own Scope 1 (on-site fuel combustion, refrigerants), Scope 2 (purchased electricity) and Scope 3 (supply chain, employee commute, guest transport in some scoping decisions, waste, etc.).
The travel buyer as a reporter. The buyer treats hotel-night emissions as their own Scope 3 Cat 6. The hotel's Scope 1 and 2 essentially become the buyer's Scope 3 Cat 6 calculation input.
This is not double-counting — the GHG Protocol explicitly permits the same physical tonne of emissions to appear in multiple corporate inventories at different points in the value chain.
The HCMI methodology for hotels
The Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) was developed jointly by the International Tourism Partnership and the World Travel & Tourism Council. It standardises how hotels calculate carbon footprint per occupied room-night. It covers:
- Fuel and electricity consumed by the hotel building
- An allocation between rooms and other functions (meetings, F&B)
- A per-room-night divisor based on occupancy
HCMI is what corporate buyers should request when running the supplier-specific method for Cat 6. Major hotel groups (Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Accor) publish HCMI numbers for their estates.
Where the hospitality value chain gets complex
Two perennial complications:
F&B at hotels. The breakfast buffet emissions sit in the hotel's Scope 3. If a corporate buyer includes meals in the room rate, it's already inside the room-night number.
Conferences and events. Event-day emissions at a venue are usually split: room hire (Scope 3 hotel-allocated portion), catering (separate Scope 3 line), traveller transport (Cat 6 if employees, Cat 7 if commuting).
The IMPT booking layer
IMPT booking exports stay in lane: hotel-night emissions and the per-booking voluntary retirement. Anything outside that (catering at a conference, event-day emissions) is captured by the corporate expense ledger and modelled by the sustainability software.
Book ESG-compliant hotels with IMPT
Live availability across 1.7M hotels in 195 countries. Same nightly rate as direct booking. On-chain carbon retirement record per booking — audit-grade evidence for Scope 3 BVCM disclosure.
Search ESG-compliant hotels →Frequently asked
What does ghg protocol for hospitality mean for a corporate travel programme?
Hotels disclose their own Scope 1, 2 and 3. Travel buyers report hotel-night emissions under their own Scope 3 Category 6. The two are linked but not double-counted because the Corporate Standard explicitly allows hotel-night emissions to appear in both inventories.
How does IMPT's per-booking retirement actually work?
Every confirmed hotel booking through IMPT triggers the retirement of one tonne of UN-verified CO₂ from a registry-listed project. The retirement is recorded on Ethereum mainnet with a transaction hash tied to the booking ID. The retirement is funded from IMPT's commission, so the guest or company pays the standard nightly rate.
Does the retirement reduce my Scope 3 number?
No. Voluntary credits and retirements are Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM) under the GHG Protocol, SBTi, and ESRS E1. They are disclosed separately, not netted against Scope 3 gross emissions. This is the conservative treatment that survives external assurance.
What's the evidence trail for an external audit?
For each booking IMPT can produce: the booking ID, the registry-issued credit serial, the registry name and project, the retirement date, and the on-chain transaction hash. The transaction is publicly queryable from any Ethereum block explorer. That dual representation — internal record plus immutable public ledger — is the cleanest evidence pattern available.
Which registries does IMPT use?
IMPT sources credits from UNFCCC CDM and equivalent voluntary registries. The specific project and registry vary per booking based on supply and quality criteria. Project-level breakdown is available on request for corporate accounts.
Is there a corporate dashboard?
Yes — corporate accounts get a monthly CSV export with booking-level data including all the fields needed for Scope 3 Cat 6 reporting and BVCM disclosure. The export is designed to ingest cleanly into Persefoni, Watershed, Salesforce Net Zero Cloud and similar sustainability software.