Emissions from Hotel Stay.

Our approach for calculating the carbon footprint of hotel stays is based on Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmark Index and UK government's GHG conversion factors published in 2026. Based on country and optionally entered city or region in that country along with rating of the hotel, the emission factor is calculated. The final emission is calculated based on number of rooms taken in the hotel and the length of the stay.

Introduction

Ingested Data  

COUNTRY_CODE : Mandatory. This is a ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, pointing to its ISO 3166-2 article. While the list of codes is available at Wikipedia's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, we are listing the 38 countries and their 2 character codes below in the notes. 
CITY_NAME : Optional. Enter the city within the country where the hotel is based. The algorithm will search the database for the name and if it is not found, it will search for any emission factors associated with the region in which the city is located.
HOTEL_RATING : Optional. The star rating of the hotel. Enter the value of "2" for a 2-star hotel. Similarly, "3", "4" and "5" will match the corresponding rating of the hotel. If this is not known then leave it as blank.
NUMBER_OF_NIGHTS : Optional. This is the length of the stay in the hotel. The default value is 1.
NUMBER_OF_ROOMS : Optional. The number of rooms taken in the hotel. The default value is 1. Note that the number of travelers staying in the same room do not matter.

Example

import http.client

conn = http.client.HTTPSConnection("carbonsutra1.p.rapidapi.com")

payload = "country_code=IN&city_name=MUMBAI&hotel_rating=4&number_of_nights=3&number_of_rooms=1"

headers = {
    'content-type': "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
    'Authorization': "Bearer <AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN>",
    'X-RapidAPI-Key': "<AUTHORIZATION_KEY>",
    'X-RapidAPI-Host': "carbonsutra1.p.rapidapi.com"
    }

conn.request("POST", "/hotel_estimate", payload, headers)

res = conn.getresponse()
data = res.read()

print(data.decode("utf-8"))
{
  "data": {
    "type": "estimate-hotel-stay",
    "country": "India",
    "city_name": "Mumbai",
    "hotel_rating": "4",
    "number_of_nights": "3",
    "number_of_rooms": "1",
    "co2e_gm": 182160,
    "co2e_kg": 182.16,
    "co2e_mt": 0.18,
    "co2e_lb": 401.59,
    "explanation": "CarbonSutra uses the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index 2026 (CHSB2026) for this calculation, specifically leveraging the mean value from the CHSB validity test for Measure 1 - HCMI Room Night Emission (Carbon Category). Because specific emission factors for Mumbai are unlisted in CHSB2026, fallback data for India has been applied to this calculation of one room and 3 nights. This methodology relies on the Expedia Star Rating classification system. Where regional data gaps exist, proxy assignments are made according to the transparent governance rules published on carbonsutra.com. For the hotel rating of four stars, an emission factor of 60.72 kgCO2e per room night is used. This footprint evaluates to 182,160 grams of CO2e. Standardized unit conversions render this as 182.16 kg (rounded to two decimal places) or 0.18 metric tons. Scaled against imperial baselines using the conversion factor of 2.20462 (source: GHG conversion factors, 2026), the final metric is expressed as 401.59 lbs. "
  },
  "success": true,
  "status": 200
}

Countries (and COUNTRY_CODE) supported by API:

Argentina(AR), Australia(AU), Austria(AT), Belgium(BE), Canada(CA), China(CN), Colombia(CO), Costa Rica(CR), Czech Republic(CZ), Dominican Republic(DO), Egypt(EG), France(FR), Germany(DE), Greece(GR), Hong Kong(HK), India(IN), Indonesia(ID), Italy(IT),Japan(JP), Korea(KR), Malaysia(MY), Mexico(MX), Netherlands(NL), Panama(PA), Poland(PL), Portugal(PT), Puerto Rico(PR), Qatar(QA), Saudi Arabia(SA), Singapore(SG), South Africa(ZA), Spain(ES), Switzerland(CH), Taiwan(TW), Thailand(TH), Turkey(TR), United Arab Emirates(AE), United Kingdom(GB), United States of America(US) and Vietnam(VN).​

Notes on Star Ratings:

From CHSB 2026 Index, only the star classification is used. It refers to the Expedia star rating. Not all countries have all stars. CarbonSutra transparently uses the following set of rules:

  • If 5 star is selected but is absent in database for that country, then the maximum value of any other star category for that country is used. 
  • If 4 star is selected but it is absent in database, it is considered as 5 star. 
  • If 3 star is selected but it is absent in database, it is considered as 4 star. 
  • If 2 star is selected but it is absent in database, it is considered as 4 star. 
  • If no star is selected (as it is optional), the average emission factor of all other stars for that country is used.