PPHE Hotel Group, an international hospitality real estate company, which operates the Park Plaza hotel brand in Europe, has taken another significant step towards achieving its net zero status by joining forces with Zero Carbon Forum.
Zero Carbon Forum is a non-profit organisation, empowering members to reach sustainability targets with greater speed, efficiency, and profit as a united effort. With defined roadmaps backed by peers, government, and leading sustainability experts — together it helps hospitality organisations, of all sizes, progress at pace to a net zero future.
Now with close to 40 members, a membership base that’s doubled in 12 months, PPHE Hotel Group is the latest, and second largest, hotel group to sign up to the forum.
With external and internal support, including from the forum, PPHE Hotel Group will develop its net zero strategy through the course of this year. Zero Carbon Forum will share its knowledge, insights, innovation and best practices to help the hotel giant on its priority to deliver a long-term, sustainable model.
Inbar Zilberman, Chief Corporate and Legal Officer at PPHE Hotel Group said: “Joining Zero Carbon Forum is another positive move in our commitment to achieving net zero status. Last year we formed a new ESG committee to help set targets for carbon reduction, launched our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures reporting for the first time, and made our owned and managed hotels in the UK, Netherlands and Germany wholly reliant on electricity generated from 100% renewable sources.
“Now, with guidance from the forum, we will be able to define a strategy that sets manageable targets, reduces our carbon footprint, and makes our business ever more sustainable.”
As a hospitality real estate owner and operator that develops, owns and manages many of its properties, PPHE is in a unique position when it comes to integrating sustainability into its business, from the point of development, all the way to day-to-day operations. Other recent environmental initiatives introduced or supported by the Group include Carbon Negative Meetings in partnership with Radisson Hotel Group, reducing water usage and recycling more.
Mark Chapman, CEO of Zero Carbon Forum, said: “We need to act now and at pace. It’s great to have PPHE on the forum so that together we all play a part in building a zero-carbon world. Partnerships are crucial to this mission, to strengthen our strategic approach in helping organisations reach net zero in their own operations and across their value chains, and well in advance of the Government’s 2050 target.”
The UK government’s ‘Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener’ is a strategy that sets out policies and proposals for decarbonising all sectors of the UK economy to meet a net zero target by 2050. With the hospitality industry accounting for 1% of the world’s carbon emissions, and with global emissions set to increase as the demand continues to grow, the hotel industry must reduce its carbon emissions by 66% by 2030 and 90% by 2050 to stay within the 2˚C threshold agreed at COP21.
Through collective action and tools such as its freely available net zero roadmap, Zero Carbon Forum’s mission is for the hospitality industry to meet these targets much sooner, to eliminate operational emissions by 2030 and reach net zero across supply chains by 2040.