Hotels with LEED certification increase environmental performance as well as revenue, according to a new study out of Cornell University.
The study, The Impact of LEED Certification on Hotel Performance, compared 93 LEED certified hotels in the United States with a 514 comparable non-certified hotels, finding that LEED hotels had substantially higher average daily rates and revenue per available room.
“The hotel industry has embraced environmental sustainability and several hotels have registered for or earned ‘green’ certification under the LEED program,” Rohit Verma, professor at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration and co-author said. “The question was whether there is also a revenue benefit from LEED. We found that the answer is, absolutely yes.”
For the two years after obtaining LEED certification, the mean average daily rate for LEED hotels was US$20 higher than for non-LEED hotels.
The study authors said this was surprising given the high importance of cost-competitiveness in the US hotel industry.
“Many hoteliers have difficulty justifying higher rates to price-conscious customers, and yet these LEED hotels were able to collect a substantially higher rate than their non-LEED competitors,” the study authors said.
The results were true for at least two years after LEED certification, but because many hotels had only gained certification recently, it was not able to determined whether the revenue advantage continued after this time.
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