---
title: Staircase to Sustainability (S2S)
description: Staircase to Sustainability has been designed to help you manage and coordinate your approach to sustainability, working towards certification and communicating your team's efforts to customers and ot
---

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3. [Staircase to Sustainability (S2S)](https://support.hostelworld.com/knowledge/sustainability?hsLang=en#staircase-to-sustainability-s2s)

# Staircase to Sustainability (S2S)

Staircase to Sustainability has been designed to help you manage and coordinate your approach to sustainability, working towards certification and communicating your team's efforts to customers and other key stakeholders. This framework has been developed specifically for hostels, aligned with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) criteria.  

On September 27th the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive comes into effect.  This directive restricts how sustainability labels, ratings, and levels can be displayed to the consumer. Effective immediately from that date, only sustainability labels established by a public authority or backed by an independent third-party certification scheme can be shown on our consumer facing platforms.  Self-assessed frameworks, levels, and badges - including our current Staircase to Sustainability structure - can no longer be displayed on the front end in their current form. 

Whether you've already taken steps to make your hostel more environmentally friendly, or you're just starting out, the Staircase to Sustainability framework will support your hostel, by:

- Helping you review, compare, and communicate your sustainability efforts to customers and other stakeholders.
- Storing your sustainability data in a centralised tool, enabling better measurement and analysis.
- Making it easier to identify policy gaps and improvements, helping your team raise standards and ensure that sustainability efforts progress.
- Preparing your hostel for certification, gaining recognition for your sustainability practices.

Rather than self-reported levels and badges, we'll be structuring things around two things:

- Third-party certification recognition — if your hostel holds a sustainability label established by a public authority or backed by an independent third party certfication scheme we will display this on your listing. Once the directive is live we will share the full list of recognised labels and how to submit proof of certification.
- Capturing & Showcasing efforts — the goal of our Staircase to Sustainability was always to help hostels on every step of their sustainabilty journey and this goal remains unchanged.  In addition to badging for third party certified hostels, we will continue to support you with tooling to capture your sustainabilty efforts, regardless of where you are at on your journey.  This is the first step on the journey to certification.  In addition, we will continue to showcase the sustainability of the hostel sector through our social media outreach, blog articles and sustainability spotlights so please do keep sharing your stories.

**The four pillars:**

\- [Sustainable Management](https://global.hostelworld.com/staircase-to-sustainability-sustainability-management?hsLang=en)

\- [Socio Economic Impacts](https://global.hostelworld.com/staircase-to-sustainability-socio-economic?hsLang=en)

\- [Cultural Impacts](https://global.hostelworld.com/staircase-to-sustainability-cultural-impact?hsLang=en)

\- [Environmental Impacts](https://global.hostelworld.com/staircase-to-sustainability-environmental-impact?hsLang=en)

 What this means for you right now:

- The current "Submit Activity" process, levels (1, 2, 3, 3+), and badges are being retired and will no longer be available.
- If your hostel already holds, or is working towards, a recognised third-party sustainability certification, hold onto your documentation — we'll be asking for this as part of the new process.
- More detail on the new structure, timelines, and how to take part will be shared as it's confirmed.

 

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