The calculation
Room nights × the hotel factor for the country = kg CO2e. That's all there is to it. The government publishes one factor per country, per room per night, because a hotel's emissions depend mostly on the local electricity grid and how much heating or cooling it needs.
The 2026 factors for common destinations
| Where | kg CO2e per room night |
|---|---|
| UK (outside London) | 10.4 |
| London | 11.5 |
| France | 6.7 |
| Spain | 7.0 |
| Netherlands | 14.8 |
| Germany | 13.2 |
| Italy | 14.3 |
| United States | 16.1 |
| United Arab Emirates | 63.8 |
The range is wide. A night in the United Arab Emirates is about 10 times a night in France, mostly because of cooling and the local electricity grid. The government publishes 38 countries in all, plus London.
A worked example
| Trip | Room nights | Factor | kg CO2e |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK site visits | 120 | 10.4 | 1,248 |
| London meetings | 30 | 11.5 | 345 |
| A trade show in Germany (two people, separate rooms, three nights) | 6 | 13.2 | 79 |
| Total | 156 | 1,672 kg, or 1.67 tCO2e |
Where to get the data
- A travel booking tool or agent can usually export a year of bookings with the city and number of nights. Ask for room nights, not bookings.
- Expenses are the fallback for small firms. Hotel receipts show the dates, so you can count the nights. Note the country, not just the city.
- Only spend? If all you have is a total hotel spend, a spend-based estimate is possible but much rougher. Room nights are better, and usually not hard to get.
Things that trip people up
- Counting guests instead of rooms. Two people sharing is one room night.
- Using the UK factor for London. London has its own factor, which is higher than the rest of the UK.
- Expecting well-to-tank factors. The government doesn't publish well-to-tank figures for hotels, so there's nothing extra to add.
How good are these factors?
They're the best free factors for UK reporting, but the government is open about their limits. They come from the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index, have been unchanged since the 2022 set, are based mainly on larger, branded hotels, and haven't been independently verified. If a hotel gives you its own figure per room night, you can use it instead, but note where it came from.
Where hotels fit in your footprint
Hotel nights are part of Scope 3 category 6, business travel, which a PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Planmust include. Report them alongside the flights, trains and taxis on the same trips. If you fly, read our post on why the radiative forcing uplift matters.
How Carbon Recycling helps
Add hotel nights by country and Carbon Recycling applies the right year's government factor, keeps them with the rest of your business travel, and carries them into your Carbon Reduction Plan and any customer questionnaire.