More Hotels Are Becoming Certified B-Corps - Here's What That Actually Means

What does it take for a hotel to become a certified B Corporation?

Ashore Hotel, part of Adrift Hospitality, offers bikes for guests to use. Photo courtesy Adrift Hospitality

B Lab was founded in 2006 with a bold vision: to harness the power of business for good. This nonprofit organization created the BCorp certification, a rigorous standard for companies committed to social and environmental performance. Inspired by iconic brands prioritizing sustainability, B Lab’s founders sought to create a framework for businesses to measure and improve their impact. Its since grown into a global movement, certifying some 9,000 businesses.

To get certified, a business must take and pass B-Lab’s B Impact Assessment, which gauges a business’ efforts relating to the environment, its community engagement, its customers and suppliers, and how it treats employees and shareholders. Getting certified requires a score of at least 80 out of 200, with most businesses failing to reach even a 51.

The process is always evolving, and B-Lab is currently updating its assessment protocol based on feedback from its community of businesses – though the rigidity or the process and documentation required to obtain certification will not change.

“The process was not super amenable to hotels,” says Lorin Augeri, founder of Saturday Public Relations, which has worked indirectly with B Tourism and a host of certified B-Corps since 2018. One of Augiere’s first clients was Legacy Vacation Resorts, which operates B-Corp certified properties in Florida, Colorado. New Jersey, and Nevada, and is among the largest of certified hospitality brands in the United States. “There was a path, but there’s so many things that tourism can touch on that we felt weren’t being well represented. We’re hoping that the new standards, when they launch either next year or in 2026, will have a path that better reflects the hospitality industry.”

B-Corp logo. Photo: Jeppe Gustafsson /Shutterstock

The process is subjective to a company’ size, location, and other factors. Some companies are able to get certified in mere months, others spend years going through the certification process. A company can get started on the application process itself and spend as much time as it needs to complete and submit the application. Once it does so, the auditing begins. Augeri says the brands she has seen be successful in their application are able to do so because they designate a person within the organization to oversee the process (known, not ironically, as the “B-Keeper”), who can coordinate information gathering and reporting across various departments and efforts.

“It’s difficult, but I do think it’s attainable,” Augeri says, largely due to the fact that others who’ve gone through the process are generally willing to help. “Fellow B-Corps are more than happy to share secrets. If there’s a program that’s working really well, they’ll shout it from the rooftops. They want you to copy them, because what they’re doing is good.”

In total, Augieri says, 175 tourism industry businesses are certified B-Corps – but a small percentage of those are hotel brands. Some operate a portfolio of properties, like Inhabit Hotels in the United Kingdom. Others are independent properties in popular tourist destinations, such as The Pad in Silverthorne, Colorado, a B-Corp-certified hostel, and the Armada Hotel in County Clare, Ireland.

“They’re not trying to lie to your face and say they don’t care about money. Only for-profit companies can become a B-Corp,” Augeri says. “These business “are going to make their money in a way that’s good, and they’re going to spread that money out to their people, their community.”

No hotel brand better represents the B-Corp mantra than Exclusive Collection, which runs a portfolio of high-end boutique properties in the UK.

Exclusive Collection combines employee care and a push for increased circularity

Lakeside cottage at The Reeds. Photo courtesy Exclusive Collection

Throughout its more than 40 year history, Exclusive Collection has established itself as a one of the UK’s premiere boutique luxury hospitality companies, operating hotels, spas, cookery schools, and event spaces. All are on the pricey side – for example, the company recently opened eight luxury lakeside suites called The Reeds in West Sussex, complete with stunning views and personalized concierge service.

Guests epitome the epitome of luxury form the moment they arrive, driving into the gates down a winding path through a private vineyard to their lodge, where they’re served sparkling wine from grapes grown just across the garden. What guests may not see, if they don’t bother to look, is that the company built the properties with locally sourced or upcycled timber and materials, and has incorporated extensive technology to minimize food and water waste across each unit. Great care was taken to ensure minimal disruption of the surrounding habitat, and as guests relax in the splendor of the biophilic architectural design, they can rest easy knowing that renewable energy powers their entire experience. Perhaps most impressive, leftover product from the winemaking process is turned into shampoos and other wellness products used onsite.

“Everything they look at, we want it to be part of the experience,” says Danny Pecorelli, Exclusive Collection’s managing director and so of the company’s founder, Guiseppi Pecorelli. “Everything in the bathroom is made onsite, and the loo’s on gray water recycling. The guests don’t need to know that, they just need to know that we’re looking at the circularity of everything, be it water, drink products, even the food for our conferencing.

About five years ago, Exclusive Collection’s management team wanted to ensure its humanitarian and sustainability efforts were not only working, but were industry-leading. To do this, the team decided to search for industry-agnostic accreditation.

The team landed on B-Corp certification largely because it was the most comprehensive, and also because obtaining B-Corp status carries increasingly heavy weight with consumers. The company had long since put in place measures to reduce food waste and energy consumption, and felt it had a great rapport with staff – employees seemed happy, guests seemed happy, and the company had an annual Impact Statement documenting its efforts.

“We kind of organically grew into a B-Corp mindset,” Pecorelli says. “I’m a massive fan of stakeholder capitalism and that sort of people, planet, profit process. A lot of the UK-specific accreditations were all about carbon reduction – and carbon is important, but it’s not the end-all, be-all.

Pecorelli and his team found many benchmarks during the accreditation process that they’d already hit or were very close to meeting simply based on the company’s standard operating procedures. Where the certification really helped Exclusive, he notes, was in ensuring its practices and efforts were more rigorously documented. To gain and maintain B-Corp certification, the company has had to step up its cataloging.

“One refreshing thing about B-Corp is how evidence-based they are,” Pecorelli says. “For example, we were already monitoring food waste, but they came in and said, ‘Where are the records?’”

Exclusive Collection scored an 80.3 on its initial assessment in 2021, with considerably high marks for its treatment of staff, community engagement, and environmental impact. Pecorelli hopes for a score in the mid-’90s following the re-accreditation process the company is currently going through. The three-year process allows the company time to focus on improvements in at least one major area before the next re-certification. The company will spend the next three years focusing on reducing water use, in part by implementing gray water recycling at its properties. The past three years were focused on reducing carbon emissions.

“Why I love B-Corp is because it’s about continuous improvement,” Pecorelli says. “None of us on this journey are perfect. You can come to my business tomorrow and do an micro-audit and you will find things that I’m trying to do but I’m not doing 100 percent. I’ve still got some fossil fuels that I can’t eliminate. But B-Corp is very transparent about where you’re at on the journey.”

Adrift Hotels uses its influence to give back to the community

Photo courtesy Adrift Hospitality

In the US, an emblematic B-Corp-certified hotel operator is Adrift Hospitality, which runs properties — including hotels, restaurants and pubs, and even a distillery — in Washington and Oregon. The company obtained certification in 2019 and scored an 85.7 on its most recent assessment.

“It was important for us to pursue because we want folks to know that we aren’t solely in the business of making money, we are leaders in sustainable hospitality seeking a resilient future for our coastal community,” Adrift Hospitality told Matador in a statement. “As a recently recertified BCorp and Social Purpose Corporation, we operate with a triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) that aims to promote positive and minimize the negative effects upon people, our communities, and the environment,” the company said.

Adrift focuses part of its impact on giving back to organizations also working to empower their community.

“We love to support organizations in the communities we inhabit,” the company said. “We do that through several donation programs across the company. Our monthly Cocktail For a Cause Program has raised over $110,000 for local charities and our participation in Kind Traveler’s Every Stay Gives Back program has brought in over $100,00 to help build a community center.”

Much of the desire to become certified stems from a business’ love of its place and community, and a desire to protect it both for residents and visitors.

“We live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth,” the company said. “We strongly believe it is our duty to be stewards of our environment to ensure the peninsula is a place that locals and travelers can enjoy for generations to come. We are partnered with the Surfrider Foundation in their Ocean Friendly Restaurant program and are one of the initial partners in the upcoming launch of their Ocean Friendly Hotel program.”

For the hotels who undergo the process, the reward is both increased trust with conscious travelers and a business model that just may prove to be more sustainable for the long-term.

“A lot of people don’t like getting accredited because you can’t put your head above the parapet,” Exclusive Collection’s Pecorelli says. “But for me, you can put your head about the parapet and go, ‘Here’s what we’re doing, here’s where we’re heading.”