Why the Hospitality Industry Is Increasingly Looking for Sustainable Materials
For years, competition among hotels, resorts, and hospitality businesses centered mainly on location, service, and guest experience.
Today, another factor is becoming central to decisions made by guests, investors, and business partners alike: sustainability.
When guests look beyond aesthetics
Modern travelers no longer choose a hotel based on beautiful room photos alone. According to Booking.com’s Sustainable Travel Report, which surveyed more than 31,000 travelers across 34 countries, 83% of global travelers say sustainable travel matters to them, and 67% feel inspired to adopt more sustainable habits after seeing responsible practices during their trip.
These numbers point to a real shift: travelers are increasingly willing to support businesses that can demonstrate genuine environmental responsibility, not just claim it. This has pushed hotel owners and developers to ask a harder question — does the material behind every touchpoint, from furniture and key card sleeves to menu folders, packaging, and corporate gifts, actually reflect the brand’s values?
Materials are becoming part of the brand story
Hotels around the world are weaving sustainability into their brand identity — cutting single-use plastics, switching to recycled materials, or sourcing materials with a clear, traceable origin.
The reasoning is simple: guests want to know that the businesses they support are creating a measurable positive impact. Materials are no longer just physical components of a space; they have become one of the clearest ways a brand can communicate who it is.
ESG is shaping business decisions, not just guest preferences
Beyond guest expectations, investors and large organizations are placing growing weight on ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) performance.
The World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism at a Turning Point report, developed with Kearney, found that tourists generate an average of 1.6 kilograms of waste per person per day — roughly double the rate of the average person — and that without intervention, tourism-related waste could reach 205 million tonnes annually by 2034, or about 7% of global solid waste. Choosing sustainable materials has become one of the few concrete, measurable ways hospitality businesses can address that trajectory and communicate progress to stakeholders.
Why the leather and textile industry is under particular scrutiny
Leather and synthetic leather are used throughout hospitality — furniture upholstery, menu covers, key holders, luggage tags, premium packaging, corporate gifts. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s A New Textiles Economy report found that more than 97% of the fiber used in fashion and leather goods globally is still virgin material from non-renewable sources, and that over 73% of discarded textiles end up landfilled or incinerated, representing more than US$100 billion in lost material value every year.
Meanwhile, the World Travel & Tourism Council, working with UNEP, identified water bottles, single-use toiletries, plastic bags, and food packaging as among the biggest plastic pollutants across the travel and tourism value chain — and cautioned that simply swapping one single-use item for another doesn’t solve the underlying problem. What the industry needs is materials designed for circularity from the start.
Biomaterials: a growing category of options
This is where biomaterials — materials developed from natural resources or agricultural by-products — are gaining traction. By reducing reliance on fossil-based inputs, they offer hospitality businesses a more circular alternative across menus, document folders, gift boxes, premium packaging, signage, room amenities, and furniture detailing.
Within this space, the leather alternative category specifically has expanded quickly in recent years, with materials made from pineapple leaves, cactus, mushroom mycelium, apple pomace, and grape skins all entering commercial use across fashion, furniture, and automotive interiors.
PiLeatha is one of the options that has emerged from this category in Thailand. Developed by Evergen Technologies, PiLeatha is made from pineapple leaf fiber combined with natural rubber, using a proprietary fiber-extraction process developed by the company’s research team. It is plastic-free, can be cut, sewn, and finished without cracking, and supports custom thickness, texture, and color, including natural dyes.
The material won first place in the Sustainable Resource Utilization category at the Thailand Green Design Awards (TGDA) 2026, organized by Kasetsart University’s Institute of Food Research and Product Development, and is listed in the Thailand Creative & Design Center (TCDC) Material Database as a pineapple-leaf-and-natural-rubber leather alternative. It has also been used commercially in products such as passport covers, card holders, and corporate gifts, with exports reaching markets including the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia.
PiLeatha is one of the credible options in the fast-growing leather alternative market for hospitality businesses looking to switch materials, alongside other plant- and bio-based materials being developed around the world.
From guest experience to lasting impact
In a market where consumers weigh values as heavily as quality, hospitality businesses are no longer competing on comfort alone — they’re competing on the meaning behind what they choose to use.
The materials selected today, often the small details a guest barely notices, can say more about a company’s direction than any marketing campaign. That’s the underlying reason the hospitality industry, globally, is paying closer attention to sustainable materials: not as a trend, but as an emerging baseline for what a good guest experience looks like.
Sources
- World Economic Forum, Travel and Tourism at a Turning Point: Principles for Transformative Growth (2025) — weforum.org
- UN Tourism (UNWTO) & UNEP, Global Tourism Plastics Initiative
- Booking.com, Sustainable Travel Report (2024)
- Ellen MacArthur Foundation, A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future
- World Travel & Tourism Council & UNEP, Rethinking Single-Use Plastic Products in Travel & Tourism (2021)
