In support of the sustainable tourism policies initiated by the European Commission, a collaborative, multi-stakeholder Technical Secretariat will develop PEFCRs for Hotel accommodations in the European Union. The project is implemented jointly by a consortium coordinated by Adelphi, Studio Fieschi & Societ and Maki Consulting as PEFCR experts and technical leads. HOTREC – the umbrella Association of Hotels, Restaurants, Pubs and Cafes and similar establishments in Europe – will co-chair the TS. In order to co-steer this development for the next 2.5 years, further stakeholders of the hotel industry, as well as NGO representatives, are invited to apply to be members of the Technical Secretariat.

The PEF is a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method for quantifying the overall environmental impacts of products (goods or services), including carbon footprint, water footprint and a range of other environmental impacts, geared towards reliability and reproducibility of the results. The PEF is helping companies to calculate the environmental performance of their products based on specific, reliable, and verifiable information, for combatting greenwashing, and enabling fair and performance-based green claims. The Commission wants to support the EU hotel industry by developing a sound and recognised calculation method to substantiate environmental claims. Many labels and certifications have been developed in the past; more are constantly added, creating confusion and increasingly reducing trust in green claims. Hence, the PEF is the Commission's response to the demand for credibility via harmonisation, industry-wide recognition, and achieving comparability. To reach this goal, a set of specific rules needs to be defined for the respective product category in the form of a PEFCR.

The Technical Secretariat (TS) is the governing body that is developing the PEFCR. It will meet periodically to make technical decisions, discuss the progress made, and organise hotel industry testing of the draft PEFCR. There will be three-monthly meetings of the TS towards the final PEFCR over 2.5 years. The meetings are expected to be held in a virtual or hybrid format. TS members are required to regularly attend the meetings, review and comment on technical documents, and contribute to consensus-building and decision-making. Please be informed that the new Technical Secretariat members will be selected by December 2023, with the first meeting expected to take place in January 2024.

If you are interested in learning more in a webinar or have any further questions, please write to pefcr-hotels@adelphi.de.