{"id":12733,"date":"2016-11-04T16:52:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/intercontinental-hotel-group-making-sleep-sustainable\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T17:02:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T21:02:00","slug":"intercontinental-hotel-group-making-sleep-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/intercontinental-hotel-group-making-sleep-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"Intercontinental Hotel Group: Making Sleep Sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ihg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Intercontinental Hotel Group is the third largest hotel chain globally [1], with 754,265 rooms in 5,099 hotels spread across each region of the world. IHG franchises over 4,000 of these hotels and operates 824 themselves [2].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/rRF3rVimGzk<\/a><\/p>\n

Climate Change Risks Threatening IHG<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a result of their global footprint and intensive building management requirements, they will inevitably be effected by climate change in 3 key ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Given their global scope, they will inevitably face regulation on properties in specific countries, whether that be cap and trade rules or carbon taxes.<\/li>\n
  2. Their consumers will demand a certain level of sustainability from their services or else they will opt to work with competitive hotel groups.<\/li>\n
  3. Since infrastructure is their livelihood and appetite for travel drives their revenues, they will be negatively impacted by both the increased prevalence of natural disasters and the rising sea levels that threaten their properties in low-lying cities.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"ihg-china\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Going Green One Guest\u00a0at a Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

    In order to mitigate these issues IHG has already taken a number of steps to work towards a more sustainable business model. First, and most importantly, they opted to lower their water and energy consumption and carbon emissions rather than pay carbon taxes in order to continue operating at their current standards.[3] They set water and carbon reduction targets for their entire portfolio of hotel brands for 2013-2017: 12% reduction in carbon footprint per occupied room and 12% reduction in water use per occupied room in water-stressed areas. In 2015 they achieved a 3.9% reduction in their carbon footprint per occupied room, a 4.8% reduction of water consumption per occupied room in water-stressed areas, and a cost savings of $86M through the implementation of 34,389 green solutions.[3]<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    They also created the IHG Green Engage system, which compiles online carbon, energy and water usage data, in order to better enable their hotels to manage consumption and take action to reduce consumption over time. IHG Green Engage also recommends over 200 green solutions such as<\/p>\n