UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge

Why the world needs our help? 

Driven by a first-of-its-kind collaboration between UNESCO and Expedia Group, the UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge aims to promote sustainable travel, community resilience and heritage conservation globally.

All together we can drive positive change in the travel industry for future travellers.

UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge is a way for Courtyard by Marriott to publicly commit to the actions we take to protect Iceland’s local culture and the natural environment.

Five themes we are committed to:

Community engagement: we are supporting the local community through actions such as sourcing produce locally, hiring local people (around 23% of Courtyard by Marriott Keflavik employees are local), supporting the Red Cross initiative by donations, collaborating with the local “Blue Army” for a yearly initiative to clean the surrounding area.

Energy conservation: us using geothermal energy and LED lighting, helps us to conserve the energy we use not only to reduce carbon emissions but preserve natural resources.

Water conservation: we must do all we can to manage this precious resource, we do so by providing low-flow showers and water displacement devices (or ‘Save-a-Flush’) into our toilets.

Waste reduction: waste is becoming a huge problem and we are taking serious actions to lower the waste amount by strictly recycling the biggest part of our hotel’s waste and giving the option to recycle to our guests. In the end, organic waste gets turned into compost. We encourage our suppliers to deliver products in reusable packaging. We collaborate with “Blue Army”- a local organization that cleans shores, above and below waterlines. Single-use plastics reduction: approximately 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are thrown away each year, which then end up in our oceans and cause problems for ecosystems. We want to show our commitment by replacing single-use plastics, such as straws, take-away boxes and cutlery, with eco-friendly paper alternatives.