With the Covid 19 Pandemic coming to a swift end thanks to everyone's new best friends: Moderna, Phizer, and J&J, a lot of people are eagerly looking towards summer travel plans.
But not all hotel chains are created equal when it comes to health and safety ratings. Here is a quick breakdown of some of the most popular hotel chains and how they stack up.
Marriott International
Marriott is one of the world's most recognized hotel brands and it owns and operates 30 different subsidiary hotel brands around the world including Ritz Carlton, W Hotels, The St. Regis, JW Marriott and Westin Hotels and Resorts.
While Marriott scores in the 82nd percentile of Hotel chains overall for sustainability, their Training, Health and Safety score is only in the 74th percentile. Not terrible, but not great when compared to Airbnb's 98th percentile or Hilton's 87th percentile.
Las Vegas, Sands Inc
If you're headed to Las Vegas this summer to celebrate the end of quarantine, you may be headed to The Venetian or visiting the Sands Convention Center. Las Vegas Sands also owns luxury properties in Macao and Singapore.
Across their 8 total properties, Las Vegas Sands ranked in the 75th percentile for Training, Health and Safety among hotels. Overall, they posted a strong 89th percentile among hotels for overall sustainability.
Hilton Worldwide Holdings
Hilton owns and operates hotels all over the world with brands including Embassy Suites, Waldorf Astoria, and Hampton. They are based just outside of Washington, DC, and in 2019, they brought in over $9 billion USD of global revenue.
Across their over 6,000 locations, Hilton ranks in CSRHub's top 10 in the hotel industry overall, and in the 87th percentile for Training, Health and Safety.
Intercontinental Hotels Group
IHG is a multi-billion dollar hotel conglomerate based in the UK. Their subsidiaries include Holiday Inn, InterContinental, and Kimpton Hotels among others. So do you want to stay in one of their 886,000 hotel rooms?
IHG's overall sustainability score sits in the 82nd percentile among their industry. Not quite the top 10, but they're doing ok relatively speaking. Specifically in Health and Safety, they score only in the top 80%, better than Marriott, worse than Hilton.
Host Hotels and Resorts
Fun fact, Host Hotels actually used to be a part of Marriott. In 1993, they were split off as “Host Marriott Corporation” and operated independently ever since. They manage and own a lot of the same brands as the OG Marriott, so you'd. need to double check the fine print to see who you're really staying with.
And you might want to read that fine print, because Host Hotels comes in a full 11 percentage points higher than Marriott International in their overall sustainability score at 93%! Their health and safety score is only 4% higher at 78% (a lot of the difference comes from their energy, climate change and human rights scores).
MGM Resorts International
MGM Resorts is a multi-billion dollar, Fortune 500 company with a mix of properties from golf courses to hotels and casinos all over the world. Some of the most well known are the Bellagio, the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Relative to our other Las Vegas conglomerate on the list, MGM actually scores better in health and safety, at 80%. But before you go running to book a room at the Mirage, you may want to keep in mind that MGM also scores lower than any other hotel on our list in transparency and reporting and leadership ethics.
So...where should I stay?
So all in all, Hilton is definitely the way to go if you're factoring in sustainability and want to spend your money at one of the larger hotel chains.
We'll be doing a follow up post on the top 10 overall sustainable chains too. While they may be smaller, you should definitely go with them if you can find them!