Taking responsibility

Industry experts offer insight into strategies adopted by travel and tourism businesses to be more responsible and discuss how modern technologies are helping the industry achieve sustainability in their day-to-day operations

Responsible tourism is about “making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.” It requires operators, hoteliers, governments locals and tourists to take responsibility and take action to make tourism more sustainable. Slightly different from sustainable tourism, responsible tourism focuses on what people, businesses and governments can do to achieve sustainability.

This could mean minimising negative economic, environmental and social impacts. Taking the right steps towards responsible tourism generates greater economic benefits for host communities and also makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage and to the maintenance of the world’s diversity.

Harold Goodwin, WTM Responsible Tourism Advisor, said: “Despite the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), during the COVID-19 pandemic, attention shifted away from the threats posed by climate change. However, the recent invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the consequences of rising fuel prices to the travel industry and our societies. Decarbonisation and reductions in water consumption and plastic waste are now urgent priorities for our sector.”

RESPONSIBLE HOSPITALITY

Many travel and tourism industry businesses are already doing their part, with hotels, in particular, revamping their operations as part of their commitment to a greener future for the industry.

Walter Knight, Director of Hospitality, Farnek Services LLC, said: “Hotels fully understand the benefits of embracing sustainability and, therefore, are actively looking at ways to reduce their impact on the environment. One option is providing filtered water from their taps. There are companies that provide hotels with glass water bottles and a bottle cleaning washer. This will enable hotels to move away from providing plastic water bottles.

“Waste management is also very important. In many hotels today, wet waste is converted into compost, where companies are willing to procure the compost from hotels. Hotels can start to create their own vegetable gardens, providing organic homegrown vegetables, which many guests appreciate and support.

“These are all positive steps, but to make a real difference, hotels need to put a long-term environmental strategy in place. As the old adage goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and employing an expert consultancy to measure and benchmark energy and water consumption and a property’s carbon emissions is absolutely essential.”

Certification is the next stage, as Knight believes. “Through international organisations such as Green Globe, this is now critical. Last year Google introduced a new ‘green leaf’ feature that allows hotels and resorts to promote their sustainability certifications by highlighting these achievements in their search engine. This enables travellers to differentiate hotels and resorts that are genuinely eco-friendly and have audited sustainable practices. Booking.com has a similar Travel Sustainable Badge initiative.”

SUSTAINABILITY SIMPLIFIED

Although a host of new technologies have been recently introduced, businesses are still experimenting with and researching new solutions in order to adopt options that could positively impact the way people travel, without compromising on their responsibility to the planet.

Keith Bradley, Managing Partner, Globally, argued: “Technology has not yet transformed the way we travel. On the contrary, the travel industry has been slow to innovate, partly because

Hotels fully understand the benefits of embracing sustainability and, therefore, are actively looking at ways to reduce their impact

of the difficulties involved in, for example, making transportation more sustainable, and partly because budgets are constrained and habits, both of staff and customers, change slowly.

“That said, the last decade has seen technological revolutions in energy management, renewable energy and water treatment and reuse. These three areas offer significant opportunities for most hospitality venues to reduce resource consumption and hence costs with a two-to-six year ROI.”

Bradley, who will be moderating the session – Responsible Technology for Travel & Tourism – at ATM today, believes that the pandemic has had a mixed impact on the landscape of responsible tourism. “Many hospitality venues have had to put on hold or reverse steps to reduce single-use plastic. Venues that had eliminated plastic water bottles have brought them back. Water refill stations, even where guests bring their own bottles, remain the exception rather than the rule. Which is one reason why Dubai has launched DubaiCan. Budgets have also inevitably been constrained, with delays in investments in energy and water conservation and renewable energy.

“On the other hand, the pandemic has seen rapid growth in technological innovations, including tech companies providing apps to allow online check-in and check-out. Some, such as the UAE-based IOL Pay, are going further and automating payment processing, so that paper is removed, not only from the front but also from the back office.

“The pandemic has led to a significant increase in consumer interest in more sustainable living and has also put a lot of barriers in the way of people travelling. The hospitality industry should capitalise on these changes, first and foremost by creatively encouraging longer, less-frequent holidays.

“Brands could, for example, encourage travellers to book second and third hotels within a specific geographical area and offer complimentary transfers. This would increase overall brand revenue whilst encouraging customers to stay for longer (and potentially fly less often).”

Bradley further stated that technological innovators have been big indirect beneficiaries of the pandemic with far greater interest from investment funds in sustainable innovations. As a result, the opportunities open to hospitality providers to improve the guest experience and reduce resource consumption are growing exponentially.

“In many ways, there has never been a more opportune time for action; consumer concern is higher than ever and technology offers a greater array of solutions for all budgets.

“One small step any business can take is to register for a place on Living Business. This is a complimentary programme offered by Globally in partnership with HSBC.

“The programme team works with participant businesses on a one-onone basis to identify simple steps and appropriate technologies, to make their operations more sustainable.”