Google recently announced that its search results for hotels will throw up sustainability, health and safety data. One of the world’s biggest tech companies will scrape the sustainability information from the webpages of the hotels and will show directly in the search results.
The search result will be displayed in a panel on the right-hand side of the screen that will highlight information about energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction and sustainable sourcing practices. This information will be displayed below the map and room tariffs. The sustainability measurement will be calculated on the basis of energy efficiency and recycling programmes of the hotel. Other practices, such as donating leftover food, reusing towel, donating unused or left-over soaps and other toiletries, not using plastic straws and other single use plastic items, among others will be also factored while calculating the final sustainability score.
According to Google, it will generate sustainability data from the webpages of the hotels itself. Further, it will provide the hotels with a list of approved certification agencies and curated sustainability practices based on industry best practices. Hotel owners can select the parameters applicable to the property in question. In other words, Google will depend on self-certification to provide the sustainability score and will not verify the information independently.
The four identified criteria that will be used for generating sustainability score are energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction, and sustainable sourcing.