Extending Hospitality To Planet Earth

As it opens a slew of environmentally forward hotels such as The Singapore Edition, The Marriott Group is taking real steps against climate change as we learn from its Senior Vice-President of Operations Neeraj Govil.

- SUFFIAN HAKIM

IF THERE’S ANYTHING that the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference or COP28 in Dubai has shown us, it’s that business and economic interests can sometimes get in the way of affecting real, tangible change to save our planet from the terrible, possibly lasting effects of climate change. As stewards of the planet, we’ve seen all sorts of appeasement policies introduced: charging for plastic bags, pointless “carbon credits” or promised transitions to renewable energy that could take as long as an entire generation.

We’re not saying these measures are pointless, but they need to be paired with measures that are more substantial and substantiative. A few international brands are realising this and have upped the ante in the fight against climate change.

But even fewer companies have stepped up the way Marriott International has. Two years after the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, Marriott International introduced Serve 360 — an initiative to make changes in every unit of operations across the group. Some of these changes are small and systematic, while others are complete overhauls of how things were done. But all were paving the way to 2025, when the company aims to achieve numerous sustainability goals, including having all its properties be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) or BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) certified.

For its efforts, it was recently named one of Time magazine’s World’s Best Companies of 2023, based on a matrix of revenue growth, employee-satisfaction surveys and — of particular interest to our research for this article — rigorous environmental, social and corporate governance data. Marriott International came in at number 54 in this list, the highest of any hospitality group.