Certification of hotel operations
Pandox’s main environmental impact comes from the properties – primarily from heating and electricity and the use of building materials. Therefore Pandox is focusing on various activities to reduce energy and water consumption and to increase resource efficiency in operation, production and distribution.
Green Key certification is one of the leading standards for environmental responsibility and sustainable operations in the tourism industry, including for hotels. Certification ensures that environmental measures are implemented and lead to reduced energy and water consumption, renewable energy use, waste sorting at source and recycling, and the purchase of eco-labelled cleaning products and organic food. The hotels are also to focus on social responsibility as well as communication and cooperation with guests and other stakeholders. Other relevant third party-verified certifications are Nordic Swan, Green Tourism and the ISO 14001 environmental management system.
Pandox’s ambition is for all of the hotels in Operator Activities to have Green Key certification within three years of operations being taken over, unless they already have another environmental certification. 90 (100) percent of the 20 hotels within Pandox’s Operator Activities segment had environmental certification as of the end of 2022. The lower percentage is due to the fact that one hotel needed to renew its Green Key certification. Of the 137 hotels within Property Management, which are operated by tenants, 74 (63) percent had some form of environmental certification of hotel operations.
Pandox follows up annually on environmental certification and is in dialogue with the tenants who do not yet have any form of certification in place.