Hilton Worldwide receives Environment Leader’s 2016 Product of the Year Award for its state-of-the-art proprietary corporate responsibility performance measurement platform, LightStay.
The award recognises Hilton for its innovative approach to reducing its environmental impact and improving energy management with LightStay.
In addition to receiving this award for the first time, Hilton was one of the highest ranked hospitality companies on Newsweek’s 2016 Top Green Companies list for the second year in a row. The company said these achievements mark a major milestone in the evolution of Travel with Purpose, Hilton’s corporate responsibility strategy, and LightStay, which enables each of Hilton’s 4,660 hotels in more than over 104 countries to track and measure their environmental and social impact and implement positive changes.
LightStay serves as a comprehensive, one-solution platform for all environmental, operational, and social impact reporting and has enabled the company to reduce energy use by 14.5 percent, carbon output by 20.9 percent, waste output by 27.6 percent and water use by 14.1 percent in six years, resulting in an estimated $550 million of cumulative savings.
Hotels are required to track and complete improvement projects each year and more than 22,000 local projects have taken place to reduce Hilton’s impact.
LightStay uses historical data to forecast future energy usage levels and predict the impact of performance on cost and annual consumption, taking into account variables such as occupancy and weather. The system also allows tracking of the company’s progress towards its social commitments such as empowering one million young people by 2019.
“Travel with Purpose has enabled Hilton to become a leader in sustainability in our industry and beyond,” says Maxime Verstraete, vice president of corporate responsibility, Hilton Worldwide. “We are driving improvements at our properties year after year to reduce our environmental footprint and enhance our social impact in the communities where we operate. Small actions across our global portfolio such as our Earth Month initiative and commitment to source sustainable seafood, have a big impact.”