VM consolidation is an effective approach for reducing energy consumption in cloud data centres. The selection of VMs from under-loaded or overloaded machines and migrating them on effective hosts constitutes the process of VM consolidation. The algorithms in literature to select hosts for VM deployment are generally based on a single criterion. However, VM placement is a multi-criteria decision-making problem. In this paper, an attempt is made to design a host selection technique based on improved Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) for energy efficient VM deployment. The proposed selection policy uses multiple parameters to find the selection index of hosts. The selected hosts help to reduce both energy consumption and service level agreement violations. A case study-based approach is followed to validate the proposed VM deployment framework using real data, real hosts and VMs configuration. Results indicate the employability of the framework in real cloud environments.