GCC Leads Sustainable Hospitality Race

With a huge pipeline of new hotel rooms being added over the next few years, the GCC is investing heavily in sustainability, gaining a crucial edge in the race to become global leader in sustainable hospitality.

- Ranvir Nayar

Six years ago, a report by Sustainable Hospitality Alliance said that hotels worldwide needed to reduce their absolute carbon emissions by 66 pc by 2030 and by 90 pc by 2050, to ensure that the predicted growth of the industry does not lead to a corresponding increase in carbon emissions. The industry will need to go even further to help limit global warming to 1.5°C which scientists now agree is needed to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change.

For most hotel operators and countries around the world with large hotel room supplies that meant a complete refurbishment of their existing properties and retrofitting them with sustainable options. But as any architect or civil engineer would happily say, instead of trying to retrofit a building in order to make it sustainable, it is certainly better to tear down the entire structure and start afresh. As not only is it extremely complex and costly to retrofit structures to minimise their impact on the environment, but also that even the best of them can never achieve a 100 pc satisfactory result.

Thus, in many ways it is a boon for emerging tourism destinations that they have only now begun to ramp up their hotel capacity. And no region in the world is as well placed to benefit from the move to sustainability as the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, which have been in a frenzy for the past few years, building new hotels and tourist attractions at a scale not seen anywhere before.