About Us
The Green Hospitality Programme is the Irish Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Resource for Sustainable and Responsible Tourism. It was created to provide best practice environmental management advice and support to the sector following increasing cost pressures, increasing environmental regulations and a growing demand from stakeholders for all businesses to be able to demonstrate their environmental credentials.
With the signing of the Climate Action Bill in 2021 and the IPCC 2021 report, followed by the publication of the Climate Action Plan 2023 even greater demands will be made of the sector and GHP is here to assist and provide expert support. Regulatory changes from 2026 will add more requirements for businesses to be able to clearly identify their environmental performance and KPI’s.
The Green Hospitality Awards are an internationally recognised third-party environmental sustainability certification awards programme (Travalyst) which has been running since 2004 and operates to ISO 17065 standards. It requires businesses to follow a set of defined criteria and implement an Environmental Management System which then builds towards a world class environmental sustainability programme. The criteria are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Global Sustainable Tourism Council Criteria, EU Ecolabel, The WTTC Hotel Sustainability Basics, the Sustainability Hospitality Alliance Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality, and the KPI’s used conform to the SHA Hotel Carbon, Water and Waste Measurement methodologies.
In 2025 we launched our Online Training platform and moved all auditing to 3rd party independent auditors in advance of the new EU directives and to add an additional layer of quality and transparency to the awards programme.
Additional services include micro-certification through our GREENMark’s, resource efficiency consulting through the Green Trading Company, consumer engagement via Green Travel.ie and our Green Suppliers and Products pages.
Green Hospitality has been run by Maurice Bergin since 2004. Maurice has spent over 40 years in the hospitality industry in Ireland, UK and South Africa. He is a Graduate from the Shannon College of Hotel Management, holds a Master’s Degree from DIT Cathal Brugha (Now TUDublin) and studied at Cornell University.
Maurice has been a hotel manager, guesthouse and restaurant owner, food hygiene consultant, general business consultant and is now the leading hospitality environmental consultant in Ireland. He is also Six Sigma Green Belt trained, a certified Water Steward, has delivered SME support on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, is a registered environmental consultant with Enterprise Ireland and delivers Green for Business programmes for LEO’s across Ireland.
Based out of Cork and supported by a small team we can provide advice, certification, recognition, training, consulting, etc. to any business across Ireland.
