Travelodge reveals 2023 plans for its sustainability programme ‘Better Future’

We have always placed a strong emphasis on safety and security, the environment, our social responsibilities and  we recognise that there is more we can do as a responsible business, therefore in 2022, we launched our first sustainability report, titled ‘Better Future’. 

Twelve months on and we are delighted to report on our progress made to date and to also reveal our plans for the year ahead. The full Better Future report can be found here. 

Our ‘Better Future’ plan is an outline of how we choose to operate and enable us to be: Better for our Customers, Colleagues and the planet. The plan continues to focus on three core pillars of; Inclusive, Caring and Conscious, and we  remain committed to the medium-term targets it set out last year. 

Detailed below are Travelodge’s primary focuses under each pillar.    

Inclusive: Ensuring Travelodge is accessible, inclusive and affordable to its colleagues and customers.

• Diversity & inclusion: Everyone should feel welcome and part of the Travelodge team
• Social mobility: Allow our colleagues to learn more, earn more and belong

Caring: Creating a safe and healthy environment for our colleagues and customers, and ensuring their wellbeing.

• Wellbeing: Improve the physical, emotional, financial and work wellbeing of our colleagues
• Charity: Support our charity partners which are currently: Pennies and the British Heart Foundation    

Conscious: Being actively conscious of the waste we produce, the energy and resources we consume and our carbon emissions.  

• Net zero: Reduce its energy consumption through energy efficiency projects. Migrate its residual supply to green sources and / or find other ways to offset any remainder
• New builds and refurbishment programme: Build our new hotels and refurbish our existing hotels with sustainability as a key consideration  

Despite the challenges we and the broader hospitality industry have had to face over the last twelve months, we have delivered strong financial performance and also tangible, compelling progress against our Better Future plan, with further stretch targets defined for the road ahead.

Detailed below is a summary of our progress made in 2022 against our three core pillars:

Inclusive:

Aim: To have 50/50 shortlists of men and women for senior level roles with the aim of having 50/50 in role by the end of 2025. 
Progress: In 2022, 25% of our shortlisted candidates were women and 67% of roles were secured by women. At the end of 2022, 48% of colleagues in our senior roles were women.

Aim: To achieve 90% compliance to our Blueprint target for 24+ hours contracts by 2025. 
Progress: In 2022 we overachieved our target and so have increased our target to 100% for 2023 and beyond.

Caring:

Aim: To encourage a further 1,000 people to train in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (“CPR”) during 2022. 
Progress: Over 1,000 people have completed CPR training, by using the RevivR online training tool, accessible via a QR code promoted in all our hotel rooms.

Aim: To maintain 100% of hotel colleagues trained in human trafficking and child abuse.* 
Progress: We continued our training programme throughout 2022, and 100% of hotel staff completed their safeguarding refresher training during 2022.

Aim: To maintain a phishing susceptibility rate of less than 10%. 
Progress: We operate a continuous colleague testing and awareness programme. We consistently maintain a phishing susceptibility rate under 10% throughout the year whilst also increasing the complexity of the testing our colleagues are required to pass.

Conscious:

Aim: To understand our climate-related risks and opportunities the business faces and start preparation for our Task Force for Climate Related Disclosure requirements for 2023. 
Progress: We started our project with a third party expert to identify, assess and manage our climate-related risks and opportunities and prepare our TCFD disclosures.

Aim: To conclude the route to operating our existing hotels in a net zero manner (covering scope 1 and 2 emissions), aligned to SBTi and set KPIs and targets, during 2022. 
Progress: We completed our scope 1 and 2 planning, including a technology review and carbon footprint calculation and forecasting, and approved our plan to reduce energy consumption and become net zero by 2050, alongside setting up our work to measure our scope 3 footprint in 2023. We also developed our plan to align our net zero trajectory to SBTi during 2023.

Aim: To conclude reviewing our new hotel build specification, aligned to delivering net zero, during 2022. 
Progress: We completed our review of our new build specification. We have agreed the plan, for all new hotel developments entered into from early 2023, to build these future hotels to an A rated Energy Performance Certificate (“EPC”) and also to at least a very good Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (“BREEAM”) standard, and to an excellent standard where possible. We expect to reduce our energy consumption by 35% by 2030. We’ve generated an 11% reduction to date from our 2017 base and our heating and cooling project reduces electricity requirements by c.45% at our hotels.

Aim: To reduce water consumption to an average 100 litres per guest by 2025 from c.120 litres in 2022. 
Progress: In our hotels where work has completed we have reduced water consumption to 104 litres per guest. We completed 17 hotels in 2022 and 70 in total to date. We’ve reduced total water usage by 1 litre per guest during 2022.

Aim: To implement sustainable processes aligned to this plan into our procurement processes during 2022. 
Progress: We started work with our top 20 critical suppliers aligned to understand how their sustainability progress aligns with the topics included in our Better Future plan and also their carbon footprint and their plans to reduce this.

Jo Boydell, Travelodge Chef Executive comments: “I am proud of what we have achieved in the last twelve months and have seen first hand the commitment and dedication of our teams in delivering our key achievements and setting detailed plans for the coming year. I’m particularly pleased that we have completed our review and plans to become a net-zero business by 2050 (for scope 1 and 2 emissions), including the programme of works at our hotels to further reduce energy consumption.”

“I am conscious there is always more to be done and we remain committed to delivering our vision of a Better Future. I am excited to see what we can achieve as a group in the year ahead.”