From 27 September 2026, hotels, tour operators and booking platforms marketing to European consumers must be able to back up any “eco-friendly” or “sustainable” label with an independently verified certification scheme. The EU’s Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, agreed in 2024, bans vague environmental claims, restricts climate claims based on carbon-offsetting, and prohibits sustainability logos that amount to self-certification rather than third-party verification.
The rules apply to products and services already on the market, not just new ones, meaning hotels that have used a green label for years must now show it meets the directive’s standards or drop it. As of September 2026, 16 EU member states had transposed the directive into national law, while 11 had not yet done so, creating a patchwork of enforcement even as the compliance deadline arrives.
A crowded, confusing certification market
The scale of the problem the directive is trying to fix is significant: the sustainable travel initiative Travalyst updated its public register in July 2026 to list 83 separate accommodation sustainability certification systems, most combining environmental and social criteria, but many still lacking a formal accreditation body. Only nine of the 83 schemes focus purely on environmental factors, and just one covers social criteria alone, illustrating how fragmented the landscape has become for hotels trying to choose a credible scheme, and for travellers trying to compare them.
Self-declaration replaces active assessment
Rather than independently grading each certification scheme itself, Travalyst’s second-generation Certifications Initiative now lets schemes self-declare that they meet the directive’s four core tests: transparent access, stakeholder consultation, a process for handling non-compliance, and independent third-party monitoring. Kees Jan Boonen, Travalyst’s director of public affairs, said the aim is to support “system-level transparency and a consistent global threshold for sustainability information” as booking platforms decide which green labels they will continue to display.
Why it matters
For travellers, the rules should make a green label mean something closer to what it claims, rather than a marketing flourish attached loosely to a hotel’s website. For the hospitality industry, the deadline adds pressure to invest in real, verifiable sustainability measures, from energy audits to waste tracking, rather than the lighter-touch claims that have proliferated in recent years, and it gives major booking platforms a clearer basis for deciding which properties can keep their eco-badges.
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