A property that wants to demonstrate it takes the indoor environment seriously has a dozen standards to choose from. We read their published criteria against the eight pathways, one row each, and published the result as a matrix in which every covered cell quotes the criterion and links to where it is printed.

Most of the matrix is unsurprising. Water is addressed by all twelve, though only one addresses it directly rather than in passing. Materials and food are the best served, which makes sense, because sourcing is where sustainability certification grew up. Air is covered directly by three.

Then there is column four.

The only column with no middle ground

Of the twelve standards, one contains a criterion addressing radiofrequency or electromagnetic exposure. Eleven contain nothing. There are no partials.

That missing middle is what makes the column unusual. Every other pathway has standards that gesture at it: a clause about daylight with no colour temperature, an acoustic target that covers meeting rooms but not bedrooms, a materials preference with no emission class. Partial coverage is the normal condition of a standard meeting a specific question. On the electromagnetic environment there is no gesturing, because there is no clause to gesture with.

The one standard that does cover it is the Standard of Building Biology Testing Methods, SBM-2024. It is a German testing methodology used by building biologists, not a hospitality certification. No hotel holds it as a badge. It has no consumer recognition, no directory a traveller would find, and no commercial relationship with the industry it measures.

So the position is not that hospitality has a weak standard for this. It is that hospitality has no standard for this, and the only body that measures it does not certify hotels.

What that means when you read a property page

It explains something that would otherwise look like an accusation. Across the 146 properties in this index, 115 publish nothing about the wireless environment in a bedroom. That is not 115 companies choosing to withhold something. No standard has asked them for it, no auditor has requested it, and no certification they hold would have prompted it.

A property scoring zero on that pathway is not failing a test. It is sitting in a gap where no test exists.

Two smaller findings from the same read

Light is thinner than it looks. Two standards cover it, nine partially, one not at all. But almost every partial is about daylight and glazing, which is an architecture question. Circadian specification, colour temperature through the day, flicker performance and blackout provision are close to absent. The sector sells sleep and specifies daylight.

Fitwel is the awkward case, and we have marked it in a way we are not entirely comfortable with. Its published rating system states that all strategies are voluntary with no individual prerequisites. Applying our own rule consistently, that an optional credit nobody must take is partial coverage, caps Fitwel at partial on every pathway. In several places its criteria text is more specific than standards we marked as covered. The rule gives the right answer for the matrix as a whole and an unflattering one for Fitwel in particular, and we would rather say so than quietly make an exception.

How to check this

Every covered and partial cell quotes the criterion and links to the document it comes from. Nothing there characterises an organisation. "The GSTC Hotel Standard contains no criterion addressing radiofrequency exposure" is a claim about a document you can open.

We read current versions, which matters more than usual here. GSTC's 2016 Industry Criteria became the Hotel Standard v4.01 in December 2025, SBM-2015 was superseded by SBM-2024, and Green Key's 2026 to 2031 criteria take effect in October 2026. Four standards keep some material behind a member login. We have said which, and marked those cells unknown rather than absent, because a document we could not read is not a document that says nothing.

If we have read a criterion wrong, or a revision changes an answer, tell us and we will correct it and log the change.