Investors Prod Hotel Leaders on Climate Promises
Skift Take
Some green-eyed investors are adopting new tactics to coax hotel owners and operators to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Early Check-In
Editor’s Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill brings readers exclusive reporting and insights into hotel deals and development, and how those trends are making an impact across the travel industry.Climate-related risk is on investors' minds as they look at their hotel portfolios.
That's the word from Gilda Perez-Alvarado, who has spent the past month on a world tour talking to hotel investors. She's the Global CEO for hotels and hospitality for JLL’s Hotels and Hospitality Group.
"It was brought up in every single meeting we had in the Middle East and Asia," Perez-Alvarado said in an interview before she went on stage at Skift's Future of Lodging Forum last week."The biggest challenge is that there isn't a playbook that specifically lets investors know what they need to follow to get a favorable rating or handle scrutiny by regulators," Perez-Alvarado said."When you look at the ultimate investors in many real estate funds, you'll see sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and other institutional investors," Perez-Alvarado said. "These investors are becoming much more demanding that their investments have a path to net-zero carbon emissions and are insulated from future regulatory and litigation risk."In April, Ascott Residence Trust issued a sustainability-linked bond — apparently the first in the hotel sector — worth about $143 million ($200 million Singaporean).
"I sat with them in Singapore," Perez-Alvarado said. "It was brilliant. It was oversubscribed, signaling investor appetite."Sustainability-linked bonds are different from green bonds. They set macro targets for a co