Award-winning hotel and lifestyle brand citizenM highlights the company’s latest achievements and priorities in its annual ESG
report, including its focus on credible ESG data, sustaining high green building standards, rolling out salary transparency projects for employees, and an ambitious decarbonization plan across its global portfolio. Underscoring citizenM’s ongoing commitment to making change for environmentally and socially conscious travelers, the brand cements its position among those “who think purposefully about their impacts on the world.”
This statement of intent is further detailed in citizenM’s 2022 ESG report, a 120-page summary outlining how the global brand with 31 properties is setting a new standard for environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the hospitality industry. The achievements outlined, along with commitments to policy and performance goals, include a detailed blueprint for building and operating healthier, greener hotels, increasing support for people and communities, and heightening the brand’s transparency through stronger reporting and disclosure practices. Top-level takeaways from the report include:
- Empowering conscious travelers with information: citizenM provides a snapshot of each hotel’s ESG actions at the booking stage.
- Impact-per-room-night details: Data for conscious guests and corporate bookers to understand their reduced environmental footprint impact when staying at citizenM.
- Findings assured by third parties: Reviewed and certified data on such key metrics as water, waste, emissions and energy usage.
The ESG report reveals that citizenM has achieved and now maintains the highest five-star rating from the third-party sustainability benchmarking group GRESB, which offers an objective, external verification of the company’s energy, emissions, waste, and water consumption figures. In addition, specific highlights of citizenM’s achievements detailed in the new ESG report include:
- 100% of citizenM hotels are powered by green electricity.
- Diversion of 95% of waste away from landfills in 2022.
- Securing an industry-leading €480 million ($520 million) sustainability-linked loan for key properties in citizenM’s portfolio.
- Avoiding the use of 1.7 million plastic bottles through new operational policies.
- Setting new cleaning standards to minimize chemical usage during housekeeping.
- Reaching over €1.5 million ($1.6 million) donated to the citizenMovement charity focused on shortening the distance between people and opportunities.
Constructing and operating green buildings: citizenM is committed to constructing and operating green buildings that also prioritize guest health, well-being, and comfort. 100% of the hotels have received or are in the process of receiving certifications such as BREEAM, with notable green building achievements this year in Boston, Washington, Chicago, and New York.
Klaas van Lookeren Campagne, Chief Executive Officer at citizenM, says: “As a responsible company, it’s important for citizenM to be on top of topics that impact the planet, our people and our business. This is why we steadfastly accelerated our ESG efforts. There’s still much work to be done, but our progress so far makes us confident in achieving our ambitious goals.”
Developed in conjunction with a wide array of expert stakeholders – including employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and shareholders – the new ESG report underscores citizenM’s ongoing commitment to its wider ESG strategy: striving to be a more sustainable hotel brand sought out by environmentally and socially “conscious travelers, who think purposefully about their impacts on the world.” Since its first hotel opened in 2008, citizenM has pursued a mission to bring affordable luxury, green buildings and an intentional, conscious approach to travel in the world’s most exciting cities – and with this new report, pledges to push forward as a leader in the field.
citizenM is aided in this effort by its unique position in the hospitality industry as an owner/operator able to frictionlessly implement ESG efforts across its entire business, underscoring its longtime focus on “influencing positive change in a world where we are simply guests.”
This ethos feeds into the brand’s approach to sustainability and its 2023 priorities: sharing more information with conscious travelers; decarbonizing its hotels and pursuing net zero in operation; beginning the challenge of emissions and embodied carbon; enhancing employee engagement, flexibility, transparency, and diversity & inclusion; and strengthening reporting and disclosure practices. For this year and beyond, citizenM has identified its ESG priorities using a double materiality framework, the Materiality Matrix. Through the principle of double materiality, which highlights the link between a company’s financial performance and its broader impact on society and the environment, the Materiality Matrix enables citizenM to identify the most significant opportunities in its business — and those that also matter most to stakeholders and conscious travelers.
Adds the CEO van Lookeren Campagne, “We know that transparency regarding climate-related data, risks and opportunities will be critical to maintaining the trust of stakeholders. We also recognize that citizenM is in a unique position as both owner and operator of our hotels, which gives us a powerful opportunity to make a difference. Talking is good, but doing is better. The planet cannot wait.”
