FLORIS LICHT, HOTELS FOR TREES PLANTING THE FUTURE

By Donnie Rust

Floris Licht, founder of Hotels for Trees is at the head of a pioneering organisation with over two hundred and twenty hotel partners across thirty different countries. He kindly spoke with the Lost Executive, about how a good idea, requiring minimal effort from those participating, has successfully planted over four hundred thousand trees across the globe.

Regardless of sustainability being a hot topic in hospitality (as well as other industries) there seems to be more talk than action. Everyone may be willing to be more sustainable, but life is challenging, and people have different priorities. The riddle is how do you make people act without asking them to? Hotels for Trees has provided a simple solution that everyone staying at one of the participating hotels can get involved with. And what does it take? Hanging a strip of cardboard on a door handle and skipping a room clean.

The Simplest Solution

When staying at one of the participating hotels for more than one night, guests can skip the usual daily clean of their room by hanging a specific Hotel for Trees door-hanger on the door. The cleaners bypass the room, and the savings made in staff time, cleaning materials and energy costs etcetera, are used to plant a tree. As Floris Licht says, “Skip a clean and plant a tree.”

It is a simple and effective elevator pitch, but is it really the sort of replicable solution we have been looking for or just another ploy offering lip-service greenwashing?

In Focus

Floris Licht is a hotel General Manager himself who has spent his career working with Hilton and Accor, managing various prestigious and high-end hotels in multiple countries across the globe including Germany and Australia. He is eloquent, well spoken and candid and took the time to outline the specific points that has made this project successful.

Firstly, it relies on complete transparency. On hotelfortrees.com/en/results guests and interested parties can see the data on which hotels are taking part, the number of trees planted yesterday, last month and so far. The stats have been updating since July 2021 and are changed in real-time.

to demonstrate their own sustainability efforts,” he explains, “And interested parties are able to see the statistics of each hotel as well.”

Travellers, be it for business or pleasure, who have an interest in sustainability can use the hotelsfortrees. com website to search for participating hotels in any area. This is a powerful tool for the hotels because if given the choice travellers today will select a hotel with a sustainability plan over one that does not. And, from the guest’s perspective, this sort of participation won’t be foreign to them because many hotel chains offer a “skip a clean to save energy” or “reuse your towel” option, it simply takes that idea and goes a step further.

IS IT THAT SIMPLE?

Like icebergs, plans are judged by what can be seen. Floris explains that the coordination behind the project was carefully thought out and based on research and testing. A network of partnerships was established that would allow the project to get through the culture differences, language barriers and the ESG (environmental, social and governance) of different countries.

He reveals that there were a number of questions that had to be asked prior to getting set up. Such as: Where were the trees going to be planted and who was going to plant them? How were they going to make sure that the trees were looked after long enough to grow to collect carbon and how could they keep participating parties involved?

“One of the first obstacles was obviously language,” Floris explains, “Another was and remains cultural differences. And of course it isn’t at the top priority of some places.”

But surely hotel businesses would be on board with an idea that had proved results and very little (if any) real expenditure?

“It is a twofold issue,” he says, “On one side are the operators and the hotels themselves and on the other side are the guests. If you look at where there is the most focus on sustainability it actually comes from the markets where we are already present. The demand from guests from foreign countries for hotels to be sustainable is less than the demand from the UK, Europe and Australia.”

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Concurrent to this in some countries where they have tried to grow, they’ve come into conflict with the industries themselves. For example, in parts of America, the labour unions- who Floris stresses are an essential part of the industry- see the skipping of a room clean as meaning that a labourer is losing work.

“Next to this, if you’re in a country and struggling to meet basic needs, you’re not going to be concerned with sustainability,” Floris says candidly, “It’s only when you have enough that you can start saving on what you have. Sustainability is a luxury.”

The largest number of participating hotels is currently Europe where outsourced cleaning usually costs anywhere between 7 and 12 euros per room. Interestingly, Floris reveals that feedback from (young) employees at these hotels shows that they prefer working for hotels that have sustainability programmes. By relieving some of the pressure from housekeeping there is more time for training, learning & development and quality control. Additionally, many event planners and corporate buyers increasingly want to do business, meet and stay at hotels that go above and beyond when it comes to ESG.

Convenience

The Key To Success

A pilot study was conducted in the DoubleTree by Hilton Amsterdam Centraal Station, the Hilton Hotel that Floris manages himself, where they added a QR code on the back of the door-hanger that invited guests to take a short survey. Over a month period, they had an average of 30-40 people opt to skip a clean for a tree every day, but not one person took the extra step to complete the survey.

“It opened our eyes,” he says, “But it makes a lot of sense. Convenience is everything today, all of our devices and all of our new ideas are aimed at making things easier and quicker. A big part of our success is that it’s a simple idea of putting a cardboard slip on the doorknob or clicking an option on the booking in stage. Then that’s it, you’ve planted a tree and contributed to a long-term sustainability plan that’ll benefit you and your kids.”

Technology Partners

Using the technology landscape already imbedded within the hotel industry to engage the consumer has been important. Every hotel has a Property Management System and one of these systems called Mews, which is cloud based, has adopted

Hotel For Trees as their CSR partner, so a guest is able to sort things out from their device at the check in stage.

TREES AREN’T JUST TREES

Introducing the wrong types of trees into a biosphere can have devastating consequences on the environment. This is where the actionable arm of the project, Trees for All, comes into the story.

Trees for All have the network of in-country-on-site groups who are the experts in trees, soil, carbon absorption and environmental impacts.

How it works is, Hotel for Trees donates the money from their network of hotels to Trees for All who then set up the incredible work to make sure the right trees are planted in the right areas for the best results. Furthermore, the trees are looked after and monitored in what has to be the best example of fore planning.

Aletta Janssen, relationship manager, has been with Trees for All for seven years and admits that there have been a lot of companies involved in greenwashing. As such, they have been very careful in selecting who they work with.

“We’re not just planting trees,” she asserts, “We’re creating biospheres, that not only collect carbon dioxide but also provide natural habitats for insects, animals, birds and other plants. Growths have to be nurtured and looked after for years before they reach the right size for us to realistically measure the amount of carbon they’ve collected. But these growths serve many purposes prior to that time.”

She also highlights that companies that may have greenwashed previously are now starting to get involved earnestly. She explains this change of heart to government initiatives, consumer insistence and a new generation of eco-conscious businesspeople stepping into leadership positions and wanting to make a difference.

The Right Tree For The Right Soil

Aletta explains that Trees for All isn’t just their project, they work with all sorts of project partners, at home and out. Such as in Mexico where they collaborate with an independent partner to replant mangrove forests. These independent businesses work with their local agriculture. She explains that they have certain rules where projects that their partners need to follow. Such as, they have to plant various trees that are suitable to the area and be able to monitor the growths afterwards.

“Trees for All donate money to these partners to plant and look after trees,” she says, “These community-based projects also provide employment and a sense of ownership and a desire to protect them.”

Each partner is vetted before they’ll work with them based on qualifications and experience; data on the growths is sent to them twice a year and every two years they visit them in purpose to check in.

When Aletta started seven years ago, they had five staff members and now they’re up to twenty-three roughly. They’ve been operating for twenty-five years but in the last seven they’ve had a hockey stick growth. In 2023 they celebrated 10 million trees planted.

Plans For The Future

Speaking with Floris, we enquired about what is next. He says that more growth is wanted as the more the better, but that the future of the project depends on getting stuck in today.

“We have 220 partners, but half are based in Netherlands, we know there is great potential in other markets, so we have a lot of work to do. We recently hired some new market managers who will continue to grow the reach,” he says, “Some of them are hospitality students who love what we do and are native speakers for markets where we want to grow in. One is Spanish, one speaks all of the language in Scandinavia, and one speaks French and German. Our main goal right now is to continue to grow and plant one million trees a year. We are currently at around 300,000 so there still is a lot of work to do!”