Hotel food sourcing and preparation ‘unsustainable’

The hospitality sector could cut its food-related carbon emissions by 30% by 2030 by reducing hotel food waste

Jan 20, 2025

A new white paper from the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (WSHA) and Iberostar highlights the unsustainability of current food sourcing and preparation practices in hotels.

Key takeaways

• Hotels, which serve less than 0.5% of global meals, contribute 1% of food-related emissions and 3% of food waste due to high emissions intensity and inefficiencies;
• A typical hotel meal generates three times the emissions of a home-cooked meal due to extensive menus, resource-intensive operations and reliance on emissions-intensive ingredients such as meat;
• The report calls for urgent changes to reduce the environmental footprint of the hotel sector.

Get the full report from the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance