The SilverDoor Carbon Calculator.
Helping you set, monitor and achieve your business travel sustainability goals.
Business travel, corporate mobility and accommodation can
contribute significantly to the carbon footprint of any business, but
historically it has been difficult to quantify exactly what this contribution
is. With more and more global businesses publicly committing to emissions
reduction targets, we set out to create a method to estimate the emissions of
the accommodation booked with SilverDoor.
The Carbon Calculator is the first tool of
its kind to collate carbon emissions data for the serviced apartment sector. As
we gather more data, The Carbon Calculator will empower those who wish to understand the environmental impact of the
accommodation they select. It will also support Scope 3 carbon emissions
reporting, and the setting and monitoring of business travel emissions
reduction targets.
How Does It Work?
The Carbon Calculator has been built with SilverDoor’s own
proprietary methodology that allows serviced accommodation operators to provide
their own data to estimate the CO2e emissions that can be attributed to a
night’s stay in their apartments.
Property operators can enter building-specific data into our
content management system on a number of fields, including the total area of
each apartment as well as the wider building, electricity, gas and oil use,
communal and climate-controlled space, and laundry management.
The bespoke Carbon Calculator algorithm uses this
property-specific information to generate a calculated estimate of the carbon
emissions produced per night of stay. Where available, it also compares this
figure to an equivalent hotel stay using trusted industry standard data from
the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index, regarded as the most
comprehensive available.
Where we have collected the data, search results, property
profiles, quotes, and booking confirmations will all show the calculated volume
of CO2e emissions per night alongside the percentage difference to an
equivalent hotel industry average. There are some locations where there isn’t
yet a sufficient dataset to provide an equivalent hotel industry average. As
soon as it is available, the data will be presented.
By gathering this information, The Carbon
Calculator will provide more transparency and visibility into the environmental
impact of accommodation choices. Our aim with the tool is to help guests,
travel managers and bookers understand and compare the environmental
performance between options, in the same way they can already compare rates,
location and facilities.
Understanding the Carbon Calculator.
It provides an estimate of the CO2e consumption for a night
stayed in an apartment at this property, derived from the total energy
consumption of the managed area of building (the CO2e cost of energy is
calculated using government-recognised emissions factors). The calculation
incorporates impacting factors such as occupancy levels, apartment size,
renewable energy share, air conditioning and laundry use, following reporting
processes consistent with practices used in research such as the Cornell Hotel
Sustainability Benchmarking Index.
The percentage difference indicator highlights the
difference between the property-specific figure and the hotel equivalent
industry average as described below.
For properties where one leaf is displayed, it is provided in
the absence of property-specific data and instead shows an average CO2e
consumption for one night stay in a hotel. The CO2e figure you see is specific to
geographic location and derived from data from the Cornell Hotel Sustainability
Benchmarking Index.
In order to calculate an equivalent stay in a hotel, we have
matched the number of hotel rooms required to meet that of an apartment,
assuming both are used at standard occupancy. I.e. a studio or one-bedroom would
be equal to one hotel room, a two-bedroom apartment would be two hotel rooms, and
so on.
Cornell does not currently have sufficient data to provide a country or city average in all locations. Where there is no country average, we have averaged available city-level data across that country to generate an average. In instances where neither country-level, nor any city-level data is currently available, there will be no hotel equivalent industry average displayed. Instead, there will be an icon indicating that data collection is in progress.
A note on properties with multiple unit types:
On the generic search page and property profile pages, the CO2e figure displayed relates to the smallest unit type in the respective building. It can be interpreted as a ‘from’ estimation in the same way that price is displayed as ‘from’ the cheapest unit type.
To understand how selecting a larger apartment type affects your CO2e figure, you can use advanced search to filter results to your required apartment type. When you refresh your search, the CO2e calculation will be adjusted according to the apartment type you are interested in.
If you request a quote or booking from SilverDoor for a multi-bedroom apartment, the CO2e number you see on the resulting searches, and on your quote or booking documentation, will relate to the requested unit type. Equally, if using the SilverDoor online booking platform, if you filter your search by unit type, the data will relate to the selected unit type.
We recognise we are at the beginning of a journey and there
are limitations in the current dataset. By gathering more and more data, and
updating averages as they become available, we will be able to continually improve
the tool, providing users with further clarity over time.
We hope that
you find this tool useful and valuable for measuring the carbon emissions of
the accommodation you are booking. As we collect more data and receive more feedback,
the Carbon Calculator will continue to improve.
Need More Information?
If you are a property partner looking to input data, please log into your SilverDoor Connect account, select a property and click on the Carbon Calculator tab, where you will find the required data entry points as well as full instructions for use.
Please send any feedback, questions, and queries to [email protected] or contact your account manager.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Is the Carbon Calculator tool free to use for SilverDoor operators?
Yes. Where our calculator is concerned, there is no cost to our supply chain in collating the data nor inputting it, aside from time. We hope that by aligning with the HCMI methodology, we will also allow clients to understand it and use it for comparison with hotels too.
There are many ways to encourage suppliers. A common method has been to encourage or mandate accreditation, such as Ecovadis, CDP and others. There are lots of positives to this process; we have undertaken such accreditation for a few different clients and through our own initiatives with great benefit to us. So, we recommend this practice too. There is an element of duplicated work and, for some accreditations, there is not insignificant cost. We chose not to go down that route because we felt the burden on smaller partners is disproportionate to the larger operators.
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How will the emissions figures be shown to bookers & buyers?
On the website and booking tool property searches, the information will be displayed next to the property. Where the property partner is yet to provide the data to calculate emissions, the hotel equivalent data will be displayed. Where they have provided the dataset, that property estimate figure will be provided along with the % higher or lower than the hotel equivalent. The same applies on property profile pages, quotes to clients and booking confirmations.
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Will a property’s carbon figure affect its ranking and visibility on the website?
No. The website rankings and ordering will be exactly as they were before the launch of the tool. Future phases of development will allow users to sort and filter by emissions in the same way as they can with rates and facilities, but this will be driven by the user and how they choose to present their search results.
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Will you be using the results to encourage your property partners to reduce their footprint? If so, how?
You can’t manage what you can’t measure and, at this stage our focus is more about measuring and benchmarking in a simple and transparent way. While we’re pleased that it’s inspiring thought and encouraging awareness, and if that leads partners towards taking action to reduce emissions, or highlights where emissions can most likely be saved, then that’s a really positive benefit.
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Is it possible to run reports on the CO2E of our whole accommodation programme?
Yes. Your Account Manager can arrange bespoke reporting for you accommodation programme.
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What if I wish to book accommodation in some geographical areas where industry data is not available?
Where country-level data is available, industry averages will be based on these. Where country-level data is not available, city-level data will be averaged across those locations. Where neither data set is available, using a bespoke report we can apply a broader, regional average. Contact your Account Manager for more details.
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