Sustainability, quality or health and safety- do tour operators have to choose?

Tour operators requesting their contracted overseas accommodation providers to apply, measure and report their sustainability actions are facing a number of barriers when trying to ensure the effective implementation of environmental sustainability criteria in particular.

Sustainability systems are being challenged by organizational habit and perceptions rather than analytical decision making, with respect to the relationship between health and safety, quality and sustainability. Environmental indicators are identified as the most conflictive; the key findings demonstrate that most challenges require a change in human behavior rather than a technical solution. 

The data suggests that tour operators need to develop sustainability auditing tools that consider the impacts upon health, safety and quality within the accommodation.  The Travelife sustainability auditing system provides a useful case study to demonstrate the necessary requirement for a complementary approach when conducting accommodation audits.

The article has just been published as: Baddeley, J. & Font, X.  (2011) Barriers to Tour Operator Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Tourism and Recreation Research, 36 (3) 205-214.

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Benchmarked CSR practices of 10 top leisure hotel groups

As increased stakeholder pressure requires companies to be transparent about their CSR practices, it is essential to know how reliable corporate disclosure mechanisms are. This study benchmarks CSR policies and practices of ten international hotel groups of importance to the European leisure market.

We found that corporate systems are not reflected on operations, environmental performance is eco-savings driven, labour policies aim to comply with local legislation, socio-economic policies are inward looking with little acceptance of impacts on the destination, and customer engagement is limited. Generally larger hotel groups have more comprehensive policies but also greater gaps in implementation, while the smaller hotel groups focus only on environmental management and deliver what they promised.

Why was Accor top and Hilton so low down, and what are the consequences of tour operator suppliers (Riu, Barceló, Iberostar) being at the bottom?  DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE

Green entrepreneurship and green lifestyle in Europe’s protected areas- now in English and Spanish

Sustainability and business performance are related, and they both have a positive impact on each other, according to this survey of nearly 900 tourism and hospitality businesses from 59 European protected areas, conducted on behalf of the EUROPARC Federation with funding from DG Enterprise. The report is now available in English and Spanish

The green lifestyle group of businesses is dominant- for most businesses, sustainability actions are taken for altruistic reasons as part of lifestyle choices. The green entrepreneur group is smaller, with less than 20% of businesses having a profile of reasons and actions that suggest sustainability is seen as a business asset or a vehicle for competitive advantage.

We find primarily small and vulnerable businesses in European protected areas, that  claim to be sustainable in general terms but find it harder to show concrete examples. Larger businesses report more sustainability practices, and regardless of size, sustainability and financial health are related. However the lifestyle approach to sustainability means there is limited use for commercial advantages, as shown in the limited use for marketing and communications.

The implications for protected area managers are:

1. Promoting the business case of sustainability to businesses is not likely to work as much as focusing on the altruistic reasons.
2. If many of the businesses undertaking sustainability actions do it for lifestyle reasons, it will be difficult to promote any change of behaviour specially more formalised sustainability management (even if it increases profits).
3. Savings from energy, water and waste management should be promoted first, to help these businesses make savings. Help them identify the savings to then use these as a budget for other sustainability actions that will inevitably increase costs.
4. All businesses need help to understand which sustainability actions can be presented as part of quality, and to learn how and when to communicate these.

CSR for meeting and event industry- 3 year study for MPI launched

 Meeting Professionals International (MPI) has commissioned my team to manage a three year study into the importance and value of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to the meeting and event industry.

This study, the most comprehensive of its kind ever undertaken, intends to bring new insights into how the meeting and event industry can build a sustainable future through best practices. As part of this study, we will be surveying 37,000 meetings, conference and congress organisers, promoters, buyers and clients- the largest CSR survey of its kind.  The overall goal is to produce a detailed report against three core areas defined as external environment, industry engagement and consumer demand.

For a long time I have been saying that we place to much emphasis on leisure tourism, and we ought to focus on business travel- the conference, conventions, meetings and more broadly events industry are well placed to test whether sustainability certification and requirements for corporate disclosure on CSR are now a well established requirement to trade, and how this trend is evolving globally- studying all of MPI’s membership base, over three years, provides a wealth of data never compiled under one study before.

Data shows that responsible tourism makes business sense

The  article from Lluis Garay and Xavier Font  in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, soon to be published, shows that:

• Businesses that take sustainability actions for eco-savings reasons perform best financially,
• Businesses that take sustainability actions for moral reasons are happy with their financial performance, but don’t perform as well as the first group, and
• Businesses that take the least sustainability actions also have the lowest financial results.

The data was collected from 400 accommodation suppliers in Catalonia, Spain. We are now testing with 900 businesses in Europarc destinations across Europe, and I will share the results from this research in the near future.

Fáilte Ireland Green Marketing Toolkit is out!

I’ve been working with Fáilte Ireland now for nine months to prepare their Green Marketing toolkit, which I am proud to see come out today.  The main text already existed for the VisitEngland original document (who has licensed Fáilte Ireland  and VisitWales to have their own versions created).  The Wales version willl come out shortly.

The main effort in Ireland has been identifying case studies. You might think this would be an easy task. Oh, no. Companies in England were shy to talk about their sustainability credentials, and in most cases we found poor examples of management speak in their websites. But finding companies in Ireland was much harder. For a start, our remit was to work with primarily environmentally certified firms- Green Tourism Business Scheme, Green Hospitality Awards, EU Flower, Greenbox primarily. What we found is that most certification programmes pretty much ignore the green communication requirements, focusing almost exclusively on ecosavings management. These should be the firms that can confidently communicate their credentials, but weren’t.

The work for Fáilte Ireland has included face to face group training, writing over 50 individual reviews of accommodation businesses websites on their sustainability communications, and the interviews with businesses that led to this last report. To select the 30 case studies in this document, more than 60 interviews took place, trying to find an angle on how those businesses did something relatively easy for others to learn from and copy, with a small budget.

View the interactive pdf online or Download the pdf.

I am now now completing the VisitWales version of this same document, these two new versions (Ireland and Wales) are licensed by VisitEngland.

The gap between CSR reports and performance

Greenwashing is everywhere, if we are to believe Terrachoice. Their Sins of Greenwashing 2010 report tells us how the number of greenwashing incidents continues to grow, mostly with companies making claims on how they have dealt with some of the less significant impacts, while omiting all sorts of other issues. Companies get more penalised for sticking their head above the parapet and actually dealing with some of their impacts, than for burying it in the sand and ignoring the whole agenda. But how does a company choose when and how to report, so they can be taken seriously for their efforts? What is enough to feel confident about public disclosure?

I have been analysing the data from 10 international leisure hotel chains further- our research was conducted for 9 national consumer associations and published in March 2011, and presented at ITB Berlin. With my academic hat on, I am now delving more deeply into the data. There’s some really interesting lessons to be learned, which I shall present to ICRT alumni in London on Wed 13th July (alumni know where and when we meet monthly). Here’s a sneak preview:

Green Gimmicks- to raise awareness or to generate sales?

You can read in Green Lodging News about the Wyndham Virginia Crossings Hotel & Conference Center, who have  launched an offer arguably to attract more green customers- traveling in hybrid and electric vehicles. With its new “Go Green, Get Green” package, guests who arrive at the Wyndham Virginia Crossings Hotel in a hybrid vehicle and stay for two nights or more through September 1, 2011, will receive a $25 Visa gift card. It is most unlikely it will attract customers, and I do not believe the package was created for that purpose, but to raise awareness of Wyndham as a brand. So let’s put this in context.

UNEP’s report on sustainable motivation

Do marketers care about sustainability, and should they? You can guess the answer to both. A report from the United Nations Environment Programme helps us to understand better where we are and where we want to go

Why do you tell people you are responsible?

What are you trying to do? I mean, why are you letting people know you are green? Is your aim to change how people: 1) view the world- the culture of consumption, or 2) what they actually do or buy? Is your aim to satisfy market needs by making them aware of these and turning them into demands? Or do you see your role as in satisfying demands they are already aware of?  The further down this list you go, the easier your job is in a way, but also the less attention you will receive for it is less innovative.