Risks and Materiality

Yes, hotels are urged to conduct a materiality assessment. Extreme weather events have already and will continue to damage assets and infrastructure, displace communities, and disrupt supply chains and hotel business operations. These are physical risks with financial, ecological, operational and market implications. If we hope to limit further climate change and thus reduce the physical risks, we will require significant changes in the way we develop, design and operate hotels. The risks that accompany an uncertain path to a decarbonized economy are called transition risks.

Climate Pathways

Depending on which climate pathway we end up on post-COP27, 1.5°c, 2, 3 or 4°c, we will face varying transition and physical risks. Those climate pathways will dictate how ferocious our climate changes and how badly the effects will be felt (with all consequences). The pathways also dictate how decarbonisation demands will fall onto various sectors of society, including hotels. Mapping risk and material issues is expected by various stakeholders as a method to understand where your hotel may be exposed and therefore where resilience plans can be developed.

Resources

Hotel Resilient https://hotelresilient.org/ offers risk mapping, performance metrics and priority-setting on mitigation and adaptation strategies.