Sustainability

While people are still struggling to survive, some theorists say, they do not think of the common good. Yet what this crisis has shown (for some surprisingly for some not), is that this is not by definition true. In The Netherlands, for example, we see locked-down restaurants offering meals to hospitals' personnel, who have no time to kook for themselves but need more than ever substantial and healthy food.

Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease - one that is transmitted from animals to humans. More than half of all diseases that emerged in the last decades belonged to this group. Scientists believe, that the present pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg.

Comparing the current Covid-19 crisis to a prospective climate crisis solely on the basis of both being crises does not make sense to me. It is more than obvious that each crisis has its own character, cause, and outcome. It is true that both have a serious impact on the hospitality industry, but, would we call it a crisis otherwise?

This is a great question and one closely linked to our recent Sustainability Leaders Project panel question - whether sustainable tourism leads to more and better jobs. The panel's conclusion was that there is a notable relationship between sustainable tourism and jobs, mostly in terms of staff retention (because of more caring, fairer workplaces and a stronger sense of commitment and shared values).

Green teams!! I hear comments like "we tried that once" or "it's the last 15 minutes of our safety committee meeting" or "our executive committee is the green team." None of those is a solution to culture (or sustainability, quite frankly).

When working with hospitality clients on sustainability we found one key success factor: a healthy organization. Without an healthy organization, sustainability cannot be embedded into the corporate culture. This might then keep efforts narrow and superficial.