Speaking Out About Not Speaking Up
Have you ever wondered why some hotel brands—and individual hotel websites—almost seem to avoid mentioning their sustainability practices? There’s a word for that. It’s greenhushing. The term, coined by the website treehugger.com, describes businesses that deliberately stay quiet about their sustainability efforts, and it’s been well documented that hospitality is particularly prone to it.
The irony is heavy. Back in 1986, the travel sector was the first to be accused of the opposite regarding eco-friendliness. Greenwashing was the term minted then to criticize hotels claiming towel re-use notices in guest rooms were saving the planet when the motivation was more about saving laundry costs.
According to a BBC report last year, researchers at two English universities tracked hundreds of hotels and hospitality businesses and found that greenhushing is rife, with less than 2% of their social media posts mentioning environmental initiatives and a little more than a third of them actively highlighting these practices on their websites.
Interestingly, many of these same businesses do promote their green cred on B2B channels to win corporate event bookings—yet scrub those details in leisure customer marketing.
Read More: Healthy World: Is Your Hotel ‘Wellwashing’?
Why?
Fear of being accused of greenwashing is a prime factor, the research indicates. Hotel and restaurant guests have become increasingly cynical about the value of things like swapping out plastic straws—one poll showed that more than a third of travelers dismiss them as tokens. Even if properties are doing quite a bit in, say, waste reduction or food donations, they may downplay these for fear of being targeted for what they aren’t doing in other sustainability areas. At the same time, many luxury brands still continue to fear that playing up eco-friendly features such as less frequent linen changes may erode their premium image.
Many experts think shifting U.S. environmental policy has also had a dampening effect on promoting green practices. “There’s been some backlash to ESG (Environmental Social and Governance policy), and that’s certainly driving what we’re seeing in the U.S.,” according to Joshua Hilton, a professor of economics at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, who has studied greenhushing. He told the BBC that the complexity of regulation is also a factor, not just by the federal government but also by the 50 individual states, where hundreds of anti-ESG bills have been proposed over the last few years.
“Hotel and restaurant guests have become increasingly cynical about the value of things like swapping out plastic straws.”
“Firms really care about the largest states, and for example, we have Texas and California pulling in opposite directions on ESG,” he says. “It creates a confusing environment.”
Treading the Tricky Terrain
Major hotel companies tread the tricky terrain differently. Hilton Hotels & Resorts, for instance, uses a proprietary data dashboard called LightStay to track sustainability metrics across all its global properties, but it primarily shares this information externally with corporate travel managers seeking carbon accounting for business trips and events. Accor, on the other hand, exemplifies what’s been called the “silent operator model.” While more than 2,000 of its properties hold verified, independent green certifications, the company is said to rarely reference these.
On the greenwashing front, the good news in the European Union is that it is undertaking a serious crackdown on inflated, misleading and outright false claims about sustainability by businesses, including hotels and other hospitality concerns. Beginning Sept. 27, the EU Empowering Consumers Directive (EmpCo) takes effect, with much stricter rules for how sustainability claims and environmental labels are used.
In a document titled “Proof Not Promises,” EmpCo states: “Consumer-facing sustainability claims used in marketing, branding, bidding and other communications will be subject to significantly increased legal scrutiny. Claims must be clear, specific, substantiated and nonmisleading, supported by verifiable evidence. This applies not only to written statements, but also to labels, visuals and any communication that may imply environmental benefit.”
Now if only our own Federal Trade Commission would update its advisory on environmental claims in the U.S. The FTC’s latest “Green Guides” were last issued in 2012.
For meeting profs, the action step is clear: To guard against both greenhushing and greenwashing, speak up. Always ask for specific sustainability initiatives and recent metrics at hotels you are evaluating for your groups.
This article appears in the July/August 2026 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
