Staircase to Sustainability

Hostels are woven into the fabric of the places they call home - run by locals, filled with shared spaces, and built for driving connection. They put travellers face to face with real culture and real community, in a way no other type of accommodation does. That's who hostels have always been. We know how much time and effort hostels put into creating and maintaining these unique attributes. This is why we continuously work with them to showcase their efforts to the rest of the world through our Staircase to Sustainability.

💚 We’re all aware of the impact travel has on our climate, and travellers are becoming increasingly concerned too. Whether you’ve already taken steps to make your hostel more eco-friendly, or you’re just starting out, we’re with you on this journey. As part of our ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) strategy, we’ve created the Staircase to Sustainability framework to encourage you to make your hostel kinder to the planet and the people around you

Third-party sustainability certifications

🥇 To help guests find hostels that genuinely share their care for the planet, we display sustainability certifications on hostel listings — but only when that certification has been independently verified by an accredited third party. This means you can trust that what you see reflects real, externally checked practices, not a self-reported claim. But we are also aware that every hostel has to start somewhere which is where the tools we have built can support.

What is the Staircase to Sustainability?

💚 We’re all aware of the impact travel has on our climate, and travellers are becoming increasingly concerned too. Whether you’ve already taken steps to make your hostel more eco-friendly, or you’re just starting out, we’re with you on this journey. As part of our ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) strategy, we’ve created a framework to encourage you to make your hostel kinder to the planet and the people around you.

🥇 Developed specifically for hostels, the Staircase to Sustainability is a framework to help you review, compare and communicate your sustainability efforts to customers and other stakeholders. We want to make it easy to connect guests with hostels that share their care for the planet. With the Staircase, now we can.

Sustainability
Management

While the other pillars focus on action, this gives you a structure to manage and record your sustainability progress. This pillar gives you tools to ensure that your activities are smooth sailing, and you achieve your goals.

Socio-
Economic

People are at the heart of hostels and supporting them is the key to building a better world. This pillar covers processes and policies that protect the people your hostel impacts, from employees and guests to your local community.

Cultural
Impact

Discovering new cultures is one of the best things about travel. As hosts, protecting and maintaining the cultural heritage of your area is vital, and so is understanding the lifestyles of your visitors. This pillar explains how to make sure you have both covered, so all interactions are respectful.

Environmental
Impact

To make sure we have a world left to travel, we all need to reduce our environmental impact. This pillar explores how you can do this at your hostel, from pollution, waste management, to wildlife conservation and more.

Start by reducing your plastic waste

We know that many of you are already making the planet a priority, with 56% of hostels surveyed already working on sustainability initiatives and a further 37% interested in getting started.

We were the first OTA to sign up to the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative (GTPI) and we'd love you to join us by pledging to reduce your plastic waste. The initiative promotes the "three R's”: reduce, reuse and recycle your plastic. The sign-up process is simple, click below to find out more.

Learn more

IT'S OFFICIAL 🎉

Hostels produce 82% less carbon emissions than hotels

A report released by leading sustainability and compliance specialist, Bureau Veritas, has found that hostels are 82% less carbon intense (tCO₂e) than hotels.

The research, ‘Understanding the Carbon Impact of Hostels vs Hotels’, conducted in partnership with Hostelworld, across a selection of European hotels and hostels, is the second edition of the study. The first edition (published in 2022) found that hostels produced 75% less emissions than hotels. This report reveals that hostel carbon emissions have reduced year on year, while hotel emissions have increased.

We’re so excited to be able to release the findings as part of our ongoing sustainability journey and know that it will be welcome news to our increasingly environmentally-conscious sector of the travel industry.

Not only are hostels a way to meet other people and share unique experiences, we also now know for sure that they represent a more sustainable accommodation choice in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a win, win, win!

To find out more about the data points measured- and how hostels came up trumps against hotels - take a closer look at the report here.

Staircase to Sustainability

Third-party sustainability certifications

What is the Staircase to Sustainability?

SustainabilityManagement

Socio-Economic

CulturalImpact

EnvironmentalImpact