Sustainability is no longer just a guest expectation; it’s a strategic business priority. For hotels, resorts, and cruise lines, one of the most impactful levers lies in their consumables: the towels in guest rooms, the toiletries in bathrooms, the food served in restaurants, staff uniforms, bottled water, and even medical kits. But achieving real progress doesn’t stop at swapping in eco-friendlier options. It starts with measurement, and it leads to collaboration.
With the right tools and metrics, hospitality businesses can gain visibility into the full lifecycle of the products they use every day. This insight opens the door to better conversations with suppliers and joint innovation toward more sustainable alternatives. And that’s where THESIS comes in.
Why Measurement Is the Catalyst for Change
For hospitality businesses, sustainability efforts are often fragmented across departments, from housekeeping to food service and procurement. Without centralized, standardized measurement, it is difficult to drive industry-wide change. THESIS provides that missing piece: structured data and supplier collaboration tools that allow hospitality brands to measure impact at scale. The Sustainability Insight System (THESIS) from The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) provides a science-based performance assessment system that enables businesses to benchmark, evaluate, and improve the sustainability of the products they source. As a global leader in science-based sustainability assessments, TSC empowers hospitality brands to take action using credible data.
With TSC’s expert-built content & Sphera’s best in class software THESIS offers the hospitality a structured way to:
- Understand the sustainability hotspots of consumables across their lifecycle.
- Compare supplier performance and encourage transparency.
- Initiate co-innovation projects based on shared data and goals.
By shifting from anecdotal claims to measurable impact, hospitality businesses can move from transactional procurement to strategic supplier partnerships.
Real-World Examples: Turning Data Into Action
Across the hospitality industry, companies that have prioritized measurement, whether they’ve used internal tools or programs like THESIS, have created new opportunities to collaborate with their suppliers and drive sustainable innovation. The following examples show how structured measurement has affected real world outcomes.
1. Toiletries and Bathroom Amenities
Hotels like InterContinental have replaced single-use toiletries with bulk dispensers. But what’s more powerful than the switch is understanding why, data showed that this move reduces plastic waste dramatically. Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi, for instance, eliminated over 86,000 single-use bottles annually. By sharing this data with suppliers, they were able to co-develop larger format, refillable options in biodegradable packaging, meeting both sustainability and luxury standards.
2. Towels and Linens
Towel reuse programs are common, but many stop at implementation. Resorts and cruise lines that track laundry frequency, detergent use, and energy consumption can create a feedback loop with linen suppliers. For example, they can begin requesting materials that require less water to clean or last longer without replacement, aligning product specs with operational realities.
3. Food and Beverage
Cruise lines and resorts are high-intensity food service environments. That makes food & beverage the perfect category to make a big impact. For example, Accor’s Planet 21 program focuses on responsible food sourcing, waste reduction, and supplier collaboration. Through close partnerships with suppliers, Accor has integrated more sustainable food options, reduced single-use plastics in packaging, and reinforced ethical labor practices across its supply chain, aligning procurement choices with environmental and social impact goals.
Expanding the Scope of Sustainable Collaboration
Staff Uniforms
A-ROSA Cruises made headlines by working with suppliers to create eco-friendly staff uniforms certified by the “Green Button”, a German label for sustainable textiles. This collaboration was only possible because they first identified apparel as a significant category of concern through data-driven procurement reviews. With the right tools, companies can systematically assess the impact of product categories like textiles, and uncover opportunities for supplier-driven innovation, ensuring that apparel choices align with their broader goals.
Plastic Water Bottles
Norwegian Cruise Line, through supplier partnerships, transitioned to plant-based cartons, eliminating over 6 million plastic bottles annually. Four Seasons Hualalai took it further, implementing on-site bottling and reusable aluminium containers. Both began with a baseline understanding of supplier packaging & plastic waste volumes that enabled them to identify high impact reduction opportunities and engage suppliers in sustainable innovation. Data is key in building an effective approach.
Medical Kits and Guest Health Supplies
Often overlooked, items like medical kits and PPE represent a major consumable category. By tracking inventory turnover, material sourcing, and disposal impact, resorts and cruise ships can push suppliers for recyclable packaging, biodegradable materials, or take-back programs for unused goods. It all starts with a scalable program that can grow with your organization.
The THESIS Advantage: A Foundation for Supplier Innovation
THESIS doesn’t just provide a score; it creates a roadmap. By using its standardized system, hospitality organizations can:
- Evaluate the environmental and social performance by product category to easily identify key hotspots.
- Automatically share scorecards, benchmarking, and action recommendations for suppliers to easily see where they can improve.Engage suppliers with clear data and guidance to foster transparency & co-create better outcomes.
- Track year-over-year progress to reward suppliers who innovate and adjust strategies based on real impact.
Leverage a many-to-many approach that allows multiple hospitality brands to assess shared suppliers in a standard framework, reducing supplier burden.When suppliers see that sustainability performance is being measured—and tied to purchasing decisions—they have a clear incentive to improve.
Conclusion: Measurable Impact, Meaningful Collaboration
Sustainable transformation in hospitality is no longer about finding “green” products on a list, it’s about working hand-in-hand with suppliers to design better ones. Measurement is the bridge that connects procurement to progress.
As hotels, resorts, and cruise lines face rising guest expectations and regulatory demands, THESIS provides a proven framework to turn sustainability commitments into measurable action and supplier improvements. With tools like THESIS, hotels, resorts, and cruise lines can go beyond compliance and become active partners in sustainable innovation, delivering value to their guests, their bottom lines, and the planet. Discover how THESIS can transform your strategy — click here to learn more.
