Arena Hotels earns Green Key across all three Rio properties

Green Key is awarded to tourism businesses that meet rigorous criteria across environmental management, energy and water efficiency, impact reduction, environmental education and social responsibility. It operates in more than eighty countries and is among the most recognised sustainability certifications in the sector. Arena Hotels & Suites has now secured it at all three of its Rio de Janeiro properties, as reported by Green Key Brazil on 27 July 2026.

The group began the work in April 2025 with HUBIS Consultoria, the Rio-based sustainability consultancy, deploying Klappir as the data layer underneath the programme. Certification followed roughly a year later, after an assessment of procedures, indicators, internal policies and existing initiatives across all three hotels.

The practices came first. The evidence had to catch up.

Environmental action was not new at Arena. It was already part of how the properties ran. What certification required was different in kind: an auditable record, assessed on the same terms at three separate hotels at once.

That is harder than it sounds. Three hotels are not one operation with three addresses. Each has its own building, occupancy pattern, and suppliers, and each generates consumption data in its own location and format. Manual tracking produces figures that hold up individually and cannot be compared across a portfolio, which is precisely what a certifier needs to see.

Klappir consolidated water, energy, gas, waste and greenhouse gas data from across the group into a single standardised record, kept current rather than assembled at year end. HUBIS guided the implementation and steered the programme into daily routine, with an internal sustainability committee drawn from all three hotels taking ownership of the indicators and every employee trained in the practices behind them.

What the group reports

Green Key certification at Arena Leme, Arena Copacabana and Arena Ipanema

• More than R$ 1 million saved over twelve months through optimising resource use
• A 20 percent reduction in water flow
• Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions mapped and fully neutralised
• ISS Neutro secured, Rio de Janeiro's municipal green tax incentive for the voluntary carbon market
• 100 percent certified renewable electricity through I-RECs, alongside LED lighting, water efficiency systems and waste management on the Lixo Zero method

"Rio de Janeiro teaches us every day the value of an exuberant natural world. Winning the Green Key seal is our way of giving that beauty something back, in the certainty that regenerative tourism is not a trend, it is the only path."

Gabrielle Fontes, General Manager, Arena Leme

"Rio de Janeiro is one of the best known destinations in the world, and nature is one of its greatest assets. When hotels on beaches as striking as Copacabana, Ipanema and Leme adopt structured environmental management, they show that quality in hospitality and sustainability can go together. The achievement reinforces the role of the hotel sector as an active leader in building tourism that is ever more responsible and aligned with what travellers expect today and will expect in future."

Fernanda Melo, National Coordinator, Green Key Brazil

Why the ISS Neutro detail matters beyond hospitality

One result in that list works differently from the others. ISS Neutro is a programme created by the city of Rio de Janeiro to support the voluntary carbon market, and eligibility requires an audited emissions inventory. The city is not rewarding intent. It is paying against verified data.

That is a municipal policy design worth noticing anywhere. A tax incentive is only as good as the measurement behind it, and Rio wrote that into its eligibility rules rather than hoping for it. For Arena, the standardised consumption record was not only what made certification straightforward. It was the condition of access.

"We believe the tourism of the future can no longer merely consume destinations; it must nurture them. With our ESG Program, the Arena Hotels & Suites network proves that the union of Klappir's technology, data intelligence, and transparent corporate governance generates high-level hospitality that protects the environment, dignifies people, and drives business profitability."

José Domingo Bouzon, Director at Grupo Arena Hotéis

About Arena Hotels & Suites

Arena Hotels & Suites operates three hotels on the Rio de Janeiro seafront, at Leme, Copacabana and Ipanema. All three hold Green Key certification.

About HUBIS Consultoria

HUBIS is a Rio de Janeiro sustainability consultancy and a Klappir partner, working with hospitality groups across Brazil on environmental data, governance and certification.

Sources:
Green Key Brasil, 27 July 2026

Revista Hotéis, 28 July 2026