Why Your Choice of Venue Belongs in Your ESG Strategy
Which Certifications and Standards Should You Look For?
What Can You Actually Document from a Conference?
A Bottle-Free Concept and Practical Sustainability
How to Ask Your Venue the Right Questions
Summery
When a company needs to document its carbon footprint, conferences and meeting activities can form part of its carbon accounting.
But how do you ensure that your choice of venue actually provides the documentation you need for your reporting? And what should you look for when choosing a conference venue with ESG reporting in mind?
At Comwell Hotels, we work systematically to operate our hotels more responsibly, with a focus on quality and documented solutions. Here, we guide you through the key considerations.
Hosting conferences and corporate events generates CO₂ emissions through factors including transport, energy consumption, catering and waste management.
For companies with an active ESG strategy, it is therefore not enough to choose a venue that simply “feels green”. You need specific documentation for your event that can be included in your company’s ESG reporting.
This means asking your venue to provide specific data, relevant certifications and traceability. Not just impressive claims and green logos, but actual documentation that substantiates the information the venue provides.
Third-party certifications can be an important complement to your company’s other ESG documentation. When assessing a conference venue, there are several certifications and standards you should be aware of:
Green Key is an international environmental certification for hotels and conference centres. The certification sets requirements for energy, water, waste and chemicals and is verified by an independent third party.
The Organic Cuisine Label documents the proportion of a kitchen’s food and beverage purchases that are organic. At Comwell Hotels, we hold the Bronze Organic Cuisine Label, which means that between 30% and 60% of our food and beverage purchases are organic.
SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative) is an international framework for companies seeking to set climate targets based on the latest climate science. SBTi is not an environmental certification for a hotel, but it may be relevant if the venue has set climate targets that have been validated through SBTi.
Rules governing environmental and sustainability claims require statements and claims to be substantiated, making recognised certifications and other documentation even more important.
So always ask for documentation of the schemes and certifications highlighted by a venue.
It depends on the data your venue can provide. These are the areas you should ask about:
Energy consumption: Can the venue provide energy consumption data specifically for your event, or only an estimate based on the hotel’s total consumption? The more precise the data, the better for your reporting.
Catering and food waste: What proportion of the ingredients are organic? How is food waste managed? At Comwell Hotels, for example, we serve scrambled eggs and hot breakfast dishes in individual portions on the breakfast buffet, partly to reduce food waste.
Waste management: Does the venue sort waste into the categories required for your ESG reporting? Is there documentation of the recycling rate?
Transport: Can the venue provide information about the distance to the nearest station or public transport options, giving participants the opportunity to choose modes of transport with a lower carbon footprint? Are EV charging points available?
The important thing is not to accept generic claims such as “we are carbon neutral” or “we are a sustainable choice” without asking: What exactly does the claim cover? Does it cover the carbon footprint of the entire stay, or just electricity consumption?
Efforts to reduce the environmental and climate impact of a conference also involve many practical choices that, together, can make a difference.
At many Comwell hotels, meeting participants can help themselves to drinks from bottle-free dispensers offering water, rhubarb juice and other refreshments. The concept was developed in collaboration with Royal Unibrew and can help reduce the use of single-use drinks packaging.
These are the kinds of practical initiatives that can be relevant to document as part of a company’s overall work on the environment and resource consumption.
When contacting a potential conference venue, these questions can give you the best basis for your ESG documentation:
Which third-party certifications do you hold, and can you provide valid documentation?
Can you provide specific data on energy consumption, food waste and waste management relating to our event?
How do you ensure food traceability, and what proportion is organic?
Are your climate-related claims verified by an independent third party?
Can you provide consolidated documentation after the event that can be included in our ESG reporting?
The more precise the answers you receive, the easier it will be to document your conference activities as part of your company’s overall ESG and climate efforts.
Your choice of venue for meetings and conferences can form part of your company’s overall ESG efforts and climate documentation.
When choosing a conference venue, you should therefore check whether it holds relevant third-party certifications, including Green Key and the Organic Cuisine Label.
You should request specific documentation on energy consumption, food waste and waste management, and avoid accepting general sustainability claims without supporting data.
At Comwell Hotels, we work every day to create great experiences with consideration for people and the environment, and we can provide documentation on our efforts and the ESG data available to us.
Executive management meetings are a significant investment of valuable time. When six to ten of a company’s most experienced leaders spend an entire day together, every minute counts. Yet agendas are often packed from morning to evening, with no breaks, variety or time for reflection. The result is exhausted participants and decisions that only take shape weeks after the meeting – if at all.
When you bring colleagues together from across the country for a meeting or conference, one factor often determines whether the day starts with energy or frustration: travel time. An extra hour in the car or on the train for 50 participants doesn't just mean 50 hours lost. It means energy levels are already depleted before the first agenda item even begins.
Most companies invest significant resources in strategy seminars and management meetings. Travel time, venues, catering and, not least, the time participants spend away from their day-to-day responsibilities. But how often do these meetings lead to real change? And what can you do to increase the likelihood that the decisions made in the meeting room actually lead to action afterwards?
