FAQ
Implementing sustainable development

Accor created a Sustainable Development Department in 2002. Its goals are threefold :

• - Carrying out the Earth Guest program and steering sustainable development projects for the Group;
• - Assisting the operational and corporate departments in the implementation of sustainable development;
• - Communicating on sustainable development, both internally and externally.

This Departement is comprised of 6 full-time employees.

The implementation of sustainable development is also followed by a network of 100 correspondents over the world. Those correspondents ensure that policies are deployed on all areas, communicate on local good practices and report difficulties.

All in all, sustainable development is a very collective work in Accor. Indeed, the Sustainable Development Department collaborates with the whole Group to progressively integrate responsible practices in every function and every area: operational departments, but also corporate departments such as Purchasing, Human Resources, Marketing, Technics, Quality, hotels, Lenôtre.

Sustainable development is about changing one’s habits. For a company, therefore, it means having employees change their habits. This needs time and education, because if a change is demanded without justification you can only fail. That is why raising the teams’ awareness was the first pilar of sustainable development in the Group.
A few external circumstances can also hinder the process. As for waste for instance, Accor’s brands can work to make their products recyclable, but if some countries do not have any system to treat those products then there is not much you can do.

The Group developed and distributed various tools that enable to implement sustainable policies towards employees but also clients. Those are awareness and training tools, but also management and reporting tools.
Some of them are presented here:

Environment

• - Hotels Environment Charter (1998) and Offices Environment Charter (2008): the Environment Charter is at the same time a training tool for employees, a steering tool for more than 65 proposed actions (60 for offices), and a performance-measuring tool.
• - « Together, ever more responsible » : made in 2005, this movie proposes an overview on worldwide environmental good practices in Accor.
• - « Biodiversity: My hotel in action » guide: made by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in partnership with Accor, this guide is a working tool for hoteliers that present different possible actions for preserving biodiversity, for instance in catering, interior decoration, gardens, spas and so on. This document was financed by the French ministry of Ecology and Accor.
• - OPEN: this environmental management tool was developed internally. It enables hotels to follow and report on their water and energy consumptions, and on the number of actions they implemented from the Environment Charter. Constantly evolving, OPEN received in 2008 an add-on dedicated to the Plant for the Planet project. In 2009, it got another one for waste management.

Society

• - ACT-HIV: launched in 2007, ACT-HIV is an international program for fighting HIV/AIDS. It consists in a DVD handed to hotels, which explain in 6 steps how to set up a internal program to push back the desease.
• - « Going on a trip ?»: in May 2007, Accor made 2 awareness movies on HIV/AIDS and malaria in partnership with Air France to the attention of travelers.
• - Accor’s campaign to fight against child sex tourism: in 2008, the Sustainable Development Department distributed a CD with all the necessary material to organize sessions in exposed areas to train employees on how to prevent such practices. Overall, more than 11,000 employees were trained over the year.