The Energy & Environment Alliance (EEA) has launched a global consultation to establish the first financially material sustainability accounting standards for the hotels and lodging sector. The initiative is supported by a coalition whose members represent more than 50,000 hotels and £360bn in hospitality and real-estate capital.

Announced on 30 October 2025, the consultation is being led by the EEA Taskforce on Hotels & Lodging Sustainability Accounting Standards in collaboration with King’s Business School. It aims to create audit-grade disclosure rules that investors, lenders, operators and asset managers can use to assess risk, performance and long-term asset value.

The framework will align with IFRS S1 and S2, the global baseline for sustainability-related financial reporting already adopted or under consideration in more than 30 jurisdictions worldwide. Under these standards, companies must disclose sustainability information with the same rigour as financial results, covering emissions, transition plans, resilience and other factors materially affecting cash flows and cost of capital.

With hospitality among the most capital-intensive and climate-exposed real-estate asset classes, the EEA said credible, comparable sustainability data is now fundamental to financing, insurance pricing and valuation. The consultation is designed to translate global reporting requirements into sector-specific metrics that capital markets can apply consistently.

Ufi Ibrahim, Founder and Chief Executive of the EEA, said the initiative reflects a decisive shift in market expectations: “Sustainability performance now directly affects how assets are financed, insured and valued. The question for our industry is no longer whether we disclose, but how we do so in a way that is commercially intelligent, credible and comparable across markets.”

Professor Marc Lepere, Head of ESG and Sustainability at King’s Business School, said current data gaps make it difficult for investors to assess risk accurately: “The proposed standards translate global reporting rules into a financial language that the capital markets understand, connecting sustainability performance directly to enterprise value.”

Industry support has come from the United States and Latin America, including the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Speaking on behalf of the US market, AAHOA President & CEO Laura Lee Blake said the process will help hotel owners access capital and meet transparency demands as investor expectations evolve.

Rosanna Maietta, President & CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said participation helps ensure the sector can shape the benchmarks by which sustainability is assessed, while Camilla Barretto, CEO of the Brazilian Luxury Travel Association, highlighted the importance of ensuring emerging markets are represented in global standard-setting.

The consultation is open until 28 February 2026 and invites participation from investors, owners, developers, operators, asset managers, lenders and insurers across the hospitality sector. The finalised standards are expected to be submitted to the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation in 2026.

Further details and access to the consultation are available via the EEA website.