Getting more green footprints across the globe
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TDA: There are so many global warming events on the calendar. This can be a double-edged sword; do you believe the message is beginning to sink in, or do you believe that compassion fatigue is taking hold?
Good question. It’s rather hard to say; we’ve been very fortunate in that when we devised this idea we were approached by the UNWTO (World Tourism Organisation). So we agreed between UNWTO and PATA to support each other - we would bring an Asia Pacific perspective to all their events and they would support all our events.
It’s harder to make inroads into other industries; for example who do we talk to at Shell, or Exxon, or Toyota? We don’t know them and they don’t know us. They may be doing excellent work in their fields that we don’t know about because we only focus on tourism. So perhaps in future years we need to broaden our focus outside the tourism industry.
TDA: Fighting climate change can require a huge shift in the minds of companies and CEOs. Do you believe it’s a realistic ambition?
Absolutely. Sonu (Shivdasani - CEO) from Six Senses, or KP Ho (CEO of Banyan Tree) – they are showing this. There is also the inevitable legislation that is making companies think, ‘let’s do this ourselves before it is forced upon us.’ A can-do attitude to climate change is what we’re looking for, and I think CEOs are ready for it.
For example hoteliers tend to be quite traditional in their mindset. If you pay US$300-400 for a room night in a five-star hotel and they tell you we won’t change your sheets and towels each day, the consumer perception is that this is just another way to make money from them. Now if we were to give them an incentive, such as a free breakfast, or extra points on his card, we’d be seen as doing it for the right reasons. It’s about attaching a message to the act to show customers what you’re doing.
TDA: While Banyan Tree and Six Senses are making great strides, they are relatively small companies. Is this realistic for larger companies?
That’s why Marriott is there, and they’re doing a lot of good things. Ed Fuller took up the challenge because they’re proud of what they’re doing. Accor is doing good things, as is the Rezidor Group. John Wallace from Hyatt has a story to tell and will be in attendance. Truthfully very few people can do what Sonu (Six Senses) is doing - making his Maldives resort fully carbon-neutral by 2010. It is too expensive to implement that for a large hotel chain, so for our challenge this is too high a goal to emulate. So it’s nice to have the aspirational guys there but you need to bring it down to a working business model to make money.
TDA The attendance of the major hoteliers is very positive. There is always the danger of Marriott looking at Starwood or Hilton and saying ‘well they’re not doing anything - I don’t want to be the first one to make that step.’
This is why it takes time. It took a while for Ed Fuller (Marriott) to be comfortable to stand up in front of his piers and tell them what Marriott is doing and how they’re doing it. They have corporate responsibility, they have disclosure issues; they are stock-market listed companies who have lawyers telling them what they can say or do. So it took some persuading and arm-twisting to get some of these big buys to step up, but now they are. Because you’re right, Banyan Tree has far fewer properties than Marriott, and it’s a whole issue of owners versus management, who have different profit appetites and different ideologies. It’s a very complex issue and not easy to resolve.
TDA: There’s was a recent article that concluded that consumers are more than happy to increase their carbon footprint if it means saving a few dollars on air fares.
You’re right, not all our customers are green thinking, just as not all the general public want smoking to be banned. But there is always a vanguard of people trying to push things forward, and on the environmental issue it’s a very powerful movement.
We need to cut across the industry sectors who have previously been working alone, because they all have the same customers. We are trying to create a platform for this cross-pollination to take place.
(The PATA CEO Challenge: Confronting Climate Change will take place at Centara Hotel, Bangkok, on 29-30 April 2008)
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