The Regenerative Question: A Conversation with Willy Legrand at ITB Berlin

At ITB Berlin, Simone Puorto sat down with Dr. Willy Legrand, professor, author, researcher and speaker specialising in ESG matters in tourism and hospitality, to talk about sustainability, regeneration, and the newly launched Hotel Yearbook 2026. Willy is the Editor in Chief of the Hotel Yearbook sustainability edition, a role he has held since the very first edition, which was launched on day two of ITB Berlin.

Forty years of sustainability, and we are still breaking planetary boundaries

The conversation started with an uncomfortable question: we have had sustainability frameworks for four decades, so why are things still getting worse? Willy's answer was measured but direct. The frameworks were never the real problem. The implementation was weak, the progress incremental, and the pace nowhere near enough. Biodiversity is declining, communities are being displaced, and young people are questioning whether hospitality is an industry worth joining. If the industry keeps breaking planetary boundaries, he said, it is simply a dead end.

Regeneration is not a nicer word for sustainability

Much of the conversation turned on a distinction that matters more than it might first appear. For most people, sustainability means doing less harm. Regeneration asks something different: can hospitality actively help ecosystems and communities recover? Willy pointed to the natural world, where regeneration is not a new concept at all. Life, death, renewal. A circular, self-sustaining cycle. The problem is that modern economic models turned this into something linear: extract, consume, waste.

He also made a point about the roots of hospitality itself. Before it became an industry built around growth and resource use, hospitality was about reciprocity. Shelter, local knowledge, shared experience. Regeneration, in his view, is partly an invitation to go back to what the word actually means.

The Yearbook puts tensions on the table, not answers

The Hotel Yearbook 2026 brings together 25 contributors: architects, designers, operators, consultants, academics and researchers. They do not agree on what regeneration means in practice, and that was deliberate. Some see it as an evolution from sustainability. Others see it as a fundamentally different system. Some argue for strict measurement and accountability. Others say that focusing too much on measurement keeps you locked inside the same extractive model you are trying to leave.

Willy identified eight such tensions running through the contributions, including measurement versus meaning, and incremental versus breakthrough transformation. His view: these tensions do not need to be resolved right away. They need to be brought to the surface. When experts in a room agree on everything, that is when you should start worrying.

Cautiously optimistic

The last question was simple: is he optimistic? In public, yes, always. In private, sometimes less so. His remedy is his garden, growing vegetables, which he said brings the optimism back. It was a fitting note to end on for a conversation about living systems, cycles, and the idea that recovery is always possible.