Scope 3 Emissions (GHG Protocol)
Scope 3 emissions are the indirect greenhouse-gas emissions that occur across a company's value chain — everything it causes but does not directly own or control. Under the GHG Protocol, Scope 1 covers emissions from owned assets (e.g. a hotel's gas boilers), Scope 2 covers purchased energy (electricity), and Scope 3 covers everything else: purchased goods, waste, employee commuting, franchisees, and — critically for travel — the products a company sells.
Why it dominates in travel distribution
For an OTA, virtually the entire footprint is Scope 3: the hotel stays, flights, and car rentals booked through the platform are emissions of the suppliers, but they count in the OTA's value-chain inventory under "use of sold products." For hotel brands, stays at franchised and managed properties fall into Scope 3 rather than Scope 1/2, which is why a franchisor's Scope 3 figure dwarfs its direct emissions.
Example
A hotel group operates 50 owned hotels (Scope 1 and 2) and franchises 950 more. The franchised properties' energy use — often 90%+ of brand-wide emissions — is reported as Scope 3. Similarly, an OTA that facilitates 500 million room nights a year at roughly 20–30 kg CO₂e per room night carries a Scope 3 stay footprint in the range of 10–15 million tonnes CO₂e, orders of magnitude above its office and data-center emissions.
Why it matters
Regulation is pulling Scope 3 out of voluntary reporting: the EU's CSRD requires large companies to disclose material Scope 3 categories, and corporate travel buyers increasingly request per-stay carbon data in RFPs. That demand flows down the distribution chain — OTAs and TMCs need hotel-level emissions data to report their own Scope 3, which is why standardized measures such as carbon per occupied room night (e.g. via the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative) are becoming distribution-relevant data points, not just CSR metrics. Hotels that can supply credible emissions data gain an edge in corporate negotiations; those that cannot risk exclusion from managed travel programs.
Related
See Travalyst for the coalition standardizing traveler-facing sustainability data and Green Key for property-level certification.