When Hospitality shapes places, not just stays
Regenerative hospitality reframes hotels from standalone assets into locally embedded infrastructures that strengthen ecosystems, communities, and destination resilience. Diane Binder argues that the real shift is from “doing less harm” to actively serving place – with independent and franchised hotels acting as catalysts for land restoration, cultural vitality, and shared prosperity, supported by new governance, measurement, and blended...
For years, sustainability has been the hospitality industry’s preferred language of responsibility. Reduce energy use; offset emissions; certify operations; report progress. And yet, wherever we look, the tensions are intensifying.
Destinations are grappling with climate shocks, water stress and biodiversity loss. Residents are pushing back against tourism that extracts more than it gives. Natural ecosystems are under mounting pressure. Infrastructure is strained. Workforces are fragile, seasonal, and increasingly hard to retain. In many places, the social license for tourism is wearing thin.
The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Sustainability Edition
The HYB 2026 The Regenerative Question: What Hospitality Must Become tackles regenerative hospitality's fundamental tensions. Moving beyond sustainability buzzwords, contributors will explore three perspectives: purists advocating holistic living-systems approaches; realists demanding measurable frameworks for accountability and scalability; and strategists seeking pragmatic balance between transformation and implementation. This edition serves as a critical forum to interrogate the divides, identify synergies, and define actionable pathways forward. By convening industry experts, researchers, and entrepreneurs, we transform contested concepts into constructive dialogue and, ultimately, clarifying what regenerative hospitality authentically is and isn't.