Cornell Study Won’t End Debate on LEED Certification for Hotels
Skift Take
Many hoteliers are not necessarily convinced that LEED certification produces revenue benefits for hotels -- or if business travelers and their employers are willing to pay a premium for this green designation. That's clear because in the U.S. the number of properties getting LEED certification has been dropping since 2010.
LEED certification may engender a lot of goodwill for hotels from environmentally conscious guests, but does that translate into improved financial performance?
The question has been hotly debated in the hotel industry in recent years, but most of the studies on the subject until now have focused on LEED certification for commercial properties, and not hotels specifically.
But a recent study, The Impact of LEED Certification on Hotel Performance, by Cornell University's Center for Hospitality Research, took up the question and found that LEED-certified properties experienced higher average daily rates (ADRs) and revenue per available room (RevPar) than did comparable non-certified properties in the first two years after certification.
"LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is really aimed at controlling costs by limiting resource use," said one of the study's authors, Rohit Verma, a professor at Cornell's School of Hotel
