How to write a Climate Action Plan for your vacation rental

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably decided that you want to be part of protecting the planet for future generations. You are also likely to be interested in making improvements in your STR business, both financially and operationally. This blog will help you decide what to cover in your Climate Action Plan and how to communicate it publicly.

Why is a climate action plan important?

Whenever you start on a new initiative for your business, you’ll set a strategy and a way to monitor your progress and your ROI. Developing a Climate Action Plan is no different. Having a Climate Action Plan will help you focus where you want to get started around sustainability. You can choose actions which are relevant to your STR business and which will resonate with your guests. Importantly, you can choose steps which will bring you quick, easy wins. You may even be doing some great things already but not yet communicating them as sustainability initiatives.

We have created the EnviroRental Roadmap to help you get started on your sustainability journey. It includes lots of advice and free resources to make embarking on your Climate Action Plan as easy as possible.

Creating your Climate Action Plan

Before you can actually write up your Climate Action Plan, you’ll need to choose where you’re going to start and the actions you want to take. You’ll also need to agree who will be responsible for the different tasks which need to be undertaken.

Here are some areas to consider to ensure that you develop a relevant and achievable strategy. You’ll find information to help you answer these questions in the EnviroRental Roadmap.

• are you already taking any actions? 
• which areas do you want to tackle straight away?
• what measurement metrics will you use?
• which tools do you need to help you measure?
• how will you set targets and review progress?
• who will write up your Climate Action Plan?
• who will communicate your commitment to all your stakeholders?

Set up a sustainability team

Whilst starting on a Climate Action Plan is unlikely to be costly or time intensive, it will need some resources to ensure that you gain the maximum benefit. As they say, anything that is worth doing is worth doing properly.

Sustainability actually impacts every part of your business and so all members of your team should be involved in your Climate Action Plan.

If you are a smaller business, then you may work with external consultants. If so, you should definitely include them in your planning and ensure that they are kept informed of your progress. If you are a family business, it might just be you! If so, then just make sure that you don’t overstretch yourself and choose a small number of actions that you can reasonably achieve. You don’t have to do it all at once.

Operations 

This team is key as they will likely be responsible for the day-to-day running of your properties, such as energy, waste, water, household products etc.

Procurement

If you have a separate team or you work with external partners, these team members will be involved in sourcing more responsible products, such as cleaning and personal care products in returnable refills.

Finance 

Your finance team will be monitoring cost savings from reduction initiatives, researching relevant grants for environmental investment in your business as well as working out ROI from any new eco initiatives.

Marketing/Sales 

Your marketing and sales teams will play a very important role by ensuring that you’re communicating your Climate Action Plan including your progress, to your guests and your suppliers. And don’t forget to inspire your own staff and get them onboard as they will be essential to the success of your sustainability journey.

HR 

Countless research insights tell us that employees want to work for purpose driven businesses. Your HR team will use your Climate Action Plan as a way to attract and retain the best people in your business.

IT

Your IT team will be involved in choosing the tech solutions which you may want to use for collecting and analysing data.

What to include in your climate action plan

Once you’ve gone through the steps discussed above, you are ready to write up your Climate Action Plan. It may be your marketing team who will be responsible for doing this in conjunction with other team members. Or at least, they will take your final document and communicate it in the most appropriate way – see next section.

Here are the areas we recommend you include:

• keep it simple – it is essentially a list of what you are doing around sustainability

• an explanation of why you’ve decided to create a Climate Action Plan

• identification of any sustainable initiatives you had already adopted

• a list of the areas you have decided to focus on and the actions you plan to take – remember to use our Action Check List

• state your chosen baseline year and why you chose that year

• detail the current status for the initiatives you’ve chosen, e.g. your current electricity tariff, plastic policy or website hosting

• set and state your targets to achieve your chosen initiatives, e.g. to change to a 100% renewable energy company, to eliminate all single use plastic, to change to a green website hosting company

• if you wish, you can calculate your current carbon footprint – read more about this in the EnviroRental Roadmap Step 10:Calculate Your Carbon Footprint

• you may prefer to choose qualitative targets rather than quantitative – the most important thing is that you take action!

• decide on the timescales for your targets – some may be very quick like changing your energy tariff, others may require more time

How to communicate your climate action plan

Once your Climate Action Plan is complete in a written format, you can then decide the best way to share it. This should suit your chosen style of communication e.g:

• a dedicated page on your website

• a blog post

• a pdf document which can be downloaded from your website

Remember to include all your stakeholders. So not just your guests. Share your plan with your suppliers and partners. Your local tourism organisation or DMO are always looking for sustainable properties with the increased interest in responsible tourism. If you have relationships with the press, let them know what you’re doing and include some stats and quotes in your press release.

In short, include your sustainability focus throughout your marketing communications so that it is not just seen as a quick add-on. You’re not doing this just to be seen to be doing something – that’s called greenwashing. And don’t worry, once you get started on your sustainability journey, you’ll be hooked! Your actions will make good business sense as well as doing the right thing for the planet.

Remember that guests are now actively seeking sustainable places to stay. Responsible actions are gradually becoming the norm and guests are actively seeking out vacation rentals that have implemented green initiatives. Having a Climate Action Plan will help you to brand yourself as a sustainably-minded business. This will make your property attractive to new guests as well instilling brand loyalty amongst existing clientele.